94 COSMOS. 



begun to acquire a certain technical mastery of tlieir art. 

 Voyages of circumnavigation are, besides, but seldom of a 

 character to allow of artists visiting any extensive tracts of 

 forest land, the upper courses of large rivers, or the summits 

 of inland chains of mountains. 



Colored sketches, taken directly from nature, are the only 

 means by which the artist, on his return, may reproduce the 

 character of distant regions in more elaborately finished pic- 

 tures ; and this object will be the more fully attained where 

 the painter has, at the same time, drawn or painted directly 

 fxom nature a large number of separate studies of the foliage 

 of trees ; of leafy, flowering, or fruit-bearing stems ; of prostrate 

 trunks, overgrown with Pothos and Orchidese ; of rocks and of 

 portions of the shore, and the soil of the forest. The posses- 

 sion of such correctly-drawn and well-proportioned sketches will 

 enable the artist to dispense with all the deceptive aid of hot- 

 house forms and so-called botanical delineations. 



A great event in the history of the world, such as the eman- 

 cipation of Spanish and Portuguese America from the domin- 

 ion of European rule, or the increase of cultivation in India, 

 New Holland, the Sandwich Islands, and the southern colonies 

 of Africa, will incontestably impart to meteorology and the de- 

 scriptive natural sciences, as well as to landscape painting, a 

 new impetus and a high tone of feeling, which probably could 

 not have been attained independently of these local relations. 

 In South America, populous cities lie at an elevation of nearly 

 14,000 feet above the level of the sea. From these heights 

 the eye ranges over all the climatic gradations of vegetable 

 forms. What may we not, therefore, expect from a picturesque 

 study of nature, if, after the settlement of social discord and 

 the establishment of free institutions, a feeling of art shall at 

 length be awakened in those elevated regions ? 



All that is expressed by the passions, and all that relates to 

 the beauty of the human form, has attained its highest per- 

 fection in the temperate northern zone under the skies of 

 Greece and Italy. The artist, drawing from the depths of 

 nature no less than from the contemplation of beings of his 

 own species, derives the types of historical painting alike from 

 free creation and from truthful imitation. Landscape paint- 

 ing, though not simply an imitative art, has a more material 

 origin and a more earthly limitation. It requires for its de 

 velopment a large number of various and direct impressions, 

 which, when received from external contemplation, must be 

 fertilized by the powers of the mind, in order to be given back 



