AUTUMNAL TINTS. 9 



to canvas by any art whatever. An imitation, indeed, of all that is 

 palpable and tangible about it you may get, and it may be very 

 beautiful perhaps, and a triumph of art in a vi^ay ; but, even as you 

 gaze in admiration, ready to grant the artist all the praise that is 

 his due, are you not apt, remembering the scene as nature has it, to 



" Start, for soul is wanting there ? " 



But we must not be misunderstood. Painters and painting we 

 love, and have always loved, and should be sorry, indeed, to be 

 considered as in any way dead or indifferent to the power and 

 beauty of the art. Painting, after all, however, and especially 

 landscape painting, is but an imitative art, and the longer we live, 

 and the more we are brought face to face with nature, the more 

 shall we feel that there is a charm, an attractiveness, and a love- 

 liness about her all her own — a something that you feel but cannot 

 describe, that the artist as he gazes feels too, and strives to grasp 

 and instil into his picture, but cannot charm into interminglement 

 with his colours, " charm he never so wisely." Viewed aesthetically, 

 nature in sooth consists not of matter only, but of matter and spirit, 

 and therein is the secret of her surpassing power over us. You 

 may subtly imitate and reproduce exact representations of her more 

 prominent features and general outlines, and the painter, according 

 as he is more or less gifted with the poetic mens divina, may infuse 

 a moral meaning into his work, and a subtile beauty entirely 

 independent of the mere manipulation of his subject — be it land- 

 scape, seascape, or cloudscape — and his work may impart instruc- 

 tion as well as pleasure and delight ; but, granting all this, there 

 shall still be something awanting even in the finest pictures, that 

 something which we have ventured to call spirit — the spirit that 

 pervades and permeates nature in all her works, that is her life, 

 that may be " spiritually discerned " in her, but cannot be trans- 

 ferred to canvas. 



