THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 



matters; and more specifically we may con- 

 sider it axiomatically evident that those 

 landscapes that are artificially composed 

 and constructed are to be judged as works 

 of art, according to exactly the same prin- 

 ciples which govern the criticism of archi- 

 tecture, poetry or the dreima. 



And now, what is beauty? Consider- 

 ing how simple and common a word this is, 

 we ought to know. Moreover, when we 

 think what strenuous analysis has been ap- 

 plied to the subject by many of the ablest 

 minds of the world — philosophers, meta- 

 physicians, psychologists, — we should 

 expect that the last word had been said. 

 Yet, when we come to go over the ground 

 and see what all this analysis has yielded, 

 the net result seems to be little sljort of 

 chaos. With hundreds of books dealing 

 with these matters, more or less directly, 

 only a few definitions of beauty have been 

 seriously attempted, and these are remark- 

 able most of all for their radical disagree- 

 ment. If anyone has ever been able to tell 

 just what beauty is, he has never succeeded 

 in satisfying with his definition even the 

 critics of his own school. One of the most 

 recent and thoroughgoing writers in this 



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