JULY 389 



' The Sacred Grove' — a deep, dark Ilex wood, just like 

 those I had lately been seeing near Florence. On the 

 right a sunlit plain or valley was only indicated, and the 

 light seem,ed to beat upwards, as in nature. Along the 

 dark wood came a white -robed procession of worship- 

 pers. On the left was a tiny stone altar, on which burnt 

 the sacred fire, the smoke rising straight up into the 

 absolutely still evening air. It was a beautiful picture 

 — a thorough example of Mr. Ruskin's description, in 

 one of his Oxford lectures, of landscape painting. He 

 says : ' Landscape painting is the thoughtful and 

 passionate representation of the physical conditions 

 appointed for human existence. It imitates the aspects 

 and records the phenomena of the visible things which 

 are dangerous or beneficial to men ; and displays the 

 human methods of dealing with these, and of enjoying 

 them or suffering from them, which are either exemplary 

 or deserving of sympathetic contemplation.' 



On my return home, I found a criticism of M. Arnold 

 Boecklin's work in the ' Revue des Deux Mondes ' for 

 November, 1897, by a fellow-countryman of his, M. 

 Edouard Rod. He describes how admiring crowds 

 came from all parts of Switzerland and the adjoining 

 countries, as if for a pilgrimage, to see the loan collec- 

 tion of Arnold Boecklin's paintings, brought together 

 that year and exhibited on the occasion of his having 

 attained the age of threescore and ten. Many strangers 

 came, somewhat doubtful as to the admiration to be 

 bestowed on a painter almost entirely unknown out of 

 Germany and German Switzerland. But the display 

 seems to have convinced all that the work showed 

 wonderful power and originality, executed in a novel 

 manner. He was born rich and became poor, and for 

 years his art seems to have had a hard and uphill fight 

 with the world that did not appreciate him, and poverty 



