est and lowest
mechanism which art can be insulted by giving name to.

CHAPTER VII.

GENERAL APPLICATION OF THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES.

Sec. 1. The different selection of facts consequent on the several aims at
imitation or at truth.

We have seen, in the preceding chapters, some proof of what was before
asserted, that the truths necessary for deceptive imitation are not only
few, but of the very lowest order. We thus find painters ranging
themselves into two great classes; one aiming at the development of the
exquisite truths of specific form, refined color, and ethereal space,
and content with the clear and impressive suggestion of any of these, by
whatsoever means obtained; and the other casting all these aside, to
attain those particular truths of tone and chiaroscuro, which may trick
the spectator into a belief of reality. The first class, if they have to
paint a tree, are intent upon giving the exquisite designs of
intersecting undulation in its boughs, the grace of its leafage, the
intricacy of its organization, and all those qualities which make it
lovely or affecting of its kind. The second endeavor only to make you
believe that you are looking at wood. They are totally regardless of
truths or beauties of form; a stump is as good as a trunk for all their
purposes, so that they can only deceive the eye into the supposition
that it _is_ a stump and not canvas.

Sec. 2. The old masters, as a body, aim only at imitation.

Sec. 3. What truths they gave.

To which of these classes the great body of the old landscape painters
belonged, may be partly gathered from the kind of praise which is
bestowed upon them by those who admire them most, which either refers to
technical matters, dexterity of touch, clever oppositions of color,
etc., or is bestowed on the power of the painter to _deceive_. M. de
Marmontel, going into a connoisseur's gallery, pretends to mistake a
fine Berghem for a window. This, he says, was affirmed by its possessor
to be the greatest praise the picture had ever received. Such is indeed
the notion of art which is at the bottom of the veneration usually felt
for the old landscape painters; it is of course the palpable, first idea
of ignorance; it is the only notion which people unacquainted with art
can by any possibility have of its ends; the only test by which people
unacquainted with nature can pretend to form anything like judg