sm of the periodicals of the day on the works
of the great living artist to whom it principally refers. It was
intended to be a short pamphlet, reprobating the matter and style of
those critiques, and pointing out their perilous tendency, as guides of
public feeling. But, as point after point presented itself for
demonstration, I found myself compelled to amplify what was at first a
letter to the Editor of a Review, into something very like a treatise on
art, to which I was obliged to give the more consistency and
completeness, because it advocated opinions which, to the ordinary
connoisseur, will sound heretical. I now scarcely know whether I should
announce it is an Essay on Landscape Painting, and apologize for its
frequent reference to the works of a particular master; or, announcing
it as a critique on particular works, apologize for its lengthy
discussion of general principles. But of whatever character the work may
be considered, the motives which led me to undertake it must not be
mistaken. No zeal for the reputation of any individual, no personal
feeling of any kind, has the slightest weight or influence with me. The
reputation of the great artist to whose works I have chiefly referred,
is established on too legitimate grounds among all whose admiration is
honorable, to be in any way affected by the ignorant sarcasms of
pretension and affectation. But when _public_ taste seems plunging
deeper and deeper into degradation day by day, and when the press
universally exerts such power as it possesses to direct the feeling of
the nation more completely to all that is theatrical, affected, and
false in art; while it vents its ribald buffooneries on the most exalted
truth, and the highest ideal of landscape, that this or any other age
has ever witnessed, it becomes the imperative duty of all who have any
perception or knowledge of what is really great in art, and any desire
for its advancement in England, to come fearlessly forward, regardless
of such individual interests as are likely to be injured by the
knowledge of what is good and right, to declare and demonstrate,
wherever they exist, the essence and the authority of the Beautiful and
the True.

Whatever may seem invidious or partial in the execution of my task is
dependent not so much on the tenor of the work, as on its
incompleteness. I have not entered into systematic criticism of all the
painters of the present day; but I have illustrated each particular
exc