of which is perhaps a greater fault than to destroy its
transparency. Look at Creswick's oak again, in its dark parts. Intricate
as it is, all is blended into a cloud-like harmony of shade, which
becomes fainter and fainter, as it retires, with the most delicate
flatness and unity of tone. And it is by this kind of vaporescence, so
to speak, by this flat, misty, unison of parts, that nature, and her
faithful followers, are enabled to keep the eye in perfect repose in the
midst of profusion, and to display beauty of form, wherever they choose,
to the greatest possible advantage, by throwing it across some quiet,
visionary passage of dimness and rest.

Sec. 22. Total want of it in Both and Hobbima.

It is here that Hobbima and Both fail. They can paint oak leafage
faithfully, but do not know where to stop, and by doing too much, lose
the truth of all,--lose the very truth of detail at which they aim, for
all their minute work only gives two leaves to nature's twenty. They are
evidently incapable of even thinking of a tree, much more of drawing it,
except leaf by leaf; they have no notion nor sense of simplicity, mass,
or obscurity, and when they come to distance, where it is totally
impossible that leaves should be separately seen, yet, being incapable
of conceiving or rendering the grand and quiet forms of truth, they are
reduced to paint their bushes with dots and touches expressive of leaves
three feet broad each. Nevertheless there is a genuine aim in their
works, and their failure is rather to be attributed to ignorance of art,
than to such want of sense for nature as we find in Claude or Poussin;
and when they come close home, we sometimes receive from them fine
passages of mechanical truth.

Sec. 23. How rendered by Turner.

But let us oppose to their works the group of trees on the left in
Turner's Marly.[73] We have there perfect and ceaseless intricacy to
oppose to Poussin,--perfect and unbroken repose to oppose to Hobbima;
and in the unity of these the perfection of truth. This group may be
taken as a fair standard of Turner's tree-painting. We have in it the
admirably drawn stems, instead of the claws or the serpents; full,
transparent, boundless intricacy, instead of the shell pattern; and
misty depth of intermingled light and leafage, instead of perpetual
repetition of one mechanical touch.

Sec. 24. The near leafage of Claude. His middle distances are good.

I have already spoken (Section II. C