during the interval a tyrannical--perhaps, even a blighting,
influence over the minds, both of the public and of those to whom,
properly understood, it should serve for a guide and example. In no city
of Europe where art is a subject of attention, are its prospects so
hopeless, or its pursuits so resultless, as in Rome; because there, among
all students, the authority of their predecessors in art is supreme and
without appeal, and the mindless copyist studies Raffaelle, but not what
Raffaelle studied. It thus becomes the duty of every one capable of
demonstrating any definite points of superiority in modern art, and who
is in a position in which his doing so will not be ungraceful, to
encounter without hesitation whatever opprobrium may fall upon him from
the necessary prejudice even of the most candid minds, and from the far
more virulent opposition of those who have no hope of maintaining their
own reputation for discernment but in the support of that kind of
consecrated merit which may be applauded without an inconvenient
necessity for reasons. It is my purpose, therefore, believing that there
are certain points of superiority in modern artists, and especially in
one or two of their number, which have not yet been fully understood,
except by those who are scarcely in a position admitting the declaration
of their conviction, to institute a close comparison between the great
works of ancient and modern landscape art, to raise, as far as possible,
the deceptive veil of imaginary light through which we are accustomed to
gaze upon the patriarchal work, and to show the real relations, whether
favorable or otherwise, subsisting between it and our own. I am fully
aware that this is not to be done lightly or rashly; that it is the part
of every one proposing to undertake such a task strictly to examine, with
prolonged doubt and severe trial, every opinion in any way contrary to
the sacred verdict of time, and to advance nothing which does not, at
least in his own conviction, rest on surer ground than mere feeling or
taste. I have accordingly advanced nothing in the following pages but
with accompanying demonstration, which may indeed be true or
false--complete or conditional, but which can only be met on its own
grounds, and can in no way be borne down or affected by mere authority of
great names. Yet even thus I should scarcely have ventured to speak so
decidedly as I have, but for my full conviction that we ought not to
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