202 PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS. 



everywhere in fresh combinations ; even in the icy north, 

 herbs covering the earth, large alpine blossoms, and a serene 

 azure sky, cheer a portion of the year. Hitherto landscape 

 painting has pursued amongst us her pleasing task, familiar 

 only with the simpler form of our native floras, but not, 

 therefore, without depth of feeling, or without the treasures 

 of creative imagination. Even in this narrower field, highly 

 gifted painters, the Caracci, Gaspar Poussin, Claude Lor- 

 raine, and Euysdael, have with magic power, by the selection 

 of forms of trees and by effects of light, found scope wherein 

 to call forth some of the most varied and beautiful produc- 

 tions of creative art. The fame of these master-works can 

 never be impaired by those which I venture to hope for 

 hereafter, and to which I could not but point, in order to 

 recall the ancient but deeply-seated bond which unites 

 natural knowledge with poetry and with artistic feeling ; for 

 we must ever distinguish in landscape painting, as in every 

 other branch of art, between productions derived from direct 

 observation, and those which spring from the depths of 

 inward feeling and from the power of the idealising mind. 

 The great and beautiful works which owe their origin to 

 this creative power of the mind applied to landscape-painting, 

 belong to the poetry of nature, and like man himself, and 

 the imagination with which he is gifted, are hot rivetted to 

 the soil, or confined to any single region. I allude here 

 more particularly to the gradation in the form of trees from 

 Euysdael and Everdingen, through Claude Lorraine to Poussin 

 and Annibal Caracci. In the great masters of the art we 

 perceive no trace of local limitation ; but. an enlargement of 



