ecution
combined with this aim at effect, according to the industry and
precision of eye possessed by the master, and more or less of beauty in
the forms selected, according to his natural taste; but both the beauty
and truth are sacrificed unhesitatingly where they interfere with the
great effort at deception. Claude had, if it had been cultivated, a fine
feeling for beauty of form, and is seldom ungraceful in his foliage; but
his picture, when examined with reference to essential truth, is one
mass of error from beginning to end. Cuyp, on the other hand, could
paint close truth of everything, except ground and water, with decision
and success, but he has no sense of beauty. Gaspar Poussin, more
ignorant of truth than Claude, and almost as dead to beauty as Cuyp, has
yet a perception of the feeling and moral truth of nature which often
redeems the picture; but yet in all of them, everything that they can do
is done for deception, and nothing for the sake or love of what they are
painting.

Sec. 4. The principles of selection adopted by modern artists.

Modern landscape painters have looked at nature with totally different
eyes, seeking not for what is easiest to imitate, but for what is most
important to tell. Rejecting at once all idea of _bona fide_ imitation,
they think only of conveying the impression of nature into the mind of
the spectator. And there is, in consequence, a greater sum of valuable,
essential, and impressive truth in the works of two or three of our
leading modern landscape painters, than in those of all the old masters
put together, and of truth too, nearly unmixed with definite or
avoidable falsehood; while the unimportant and feeble truths of the old
masters are choked with a mass of perpetual defiance of the most
authoritative laws of nature.

Sec. 5. General feeling of Claude, Salvator, and G. Poussin, contrasted
with the freedom and vastness of nature.

I do not expect this assertion to be believed at present; it must rest
for demonstration on the examination we are about to enter upon; yet,
even without reference to any intricate or deep-laid truths, it appears
strange to me, that any one familiar with nature, and fond of her,
should not grow weary and sick at heart among the melancholy and
monotonous transcripts of her which alone can be received from the old
school of art. A man accustomed to the broad, wild seashore, with its
bright breakers, and free winds, and sounding roc