ffe, as a
piece of the cutting motion of shallow water, under storm,
altogether in gray, which should be especially contrasted, as a
piece of color, with the grays of Vandevelde. And the sea in the
Great Yarmouth should have been noticed for its expression of water
in violent agitation, seen in enormous extent from a great
elevation. There is almost every form of sea in it,--rolling waves
dashing on the pier--successive breakers rolling to the shore--a
vast horizon of multitudinous waves--and winding canals of calm
water along the sands, bringing fragments of bright sky down into
their yellow waste. There is hardly one of the views of the Southern
Coast which does not give some new condition or circumstance of sea.

SECTION VI.

OF TRUTH OF VEGETATION.--CONCLUSION.

CHAPTER I.

OF TRUTH OF VEGETATION.

Sec. 1. Frequent occurrence of foliage in the works of the old masters.

We have now arrived at the consideration of what was, with the old
masters, the subject of most serious and perpetual study. If they do not
give us truth here, they cannot have the faculty of truth in them; for
foliage is the chief component part of all their pictures, and is
finished by them with a care and labor which, if bestowed without
attaining truth, must prove either their total bluntness of perception,
or total powerlessness of hand. With the Italian school I can scarcely
recollect a single instance in which foliage does not form the greater
part of the picture; in fact, they are rather painters of tree-portrait
than landscape painters; for rocks, and sky, and architecture are
usually mere accessories and backgrounds to the dark masses of laborious
foliage, of which the composition principally consists. Yet we shall be
less detained by the examination of foliage than by our former subjects;
since where specific form is organized and complete, and the occurrence
of the object universal, it is easy, without requiring any laborious
attention in the reader, to demonstrate to him quite as much of the
truth or falsehood of various representations of it, as may serve to
determine the character and rank of the painter.

Sec. 2. Laws common to all forest trees. Their branches do not taper, but
only divide.

It will be best to begin as nature does, with the stems and