of wild enthusiasm,--as if I were lowering the dignity of religion by
supposing that its cause could be advanced by such means? His surprise
proves my position. It _does_ sound like wild, like absurd enthusiasm,
to expect any definite moral agency in the painters of landscape; but
ought it so to sound? Are the gorgeousness of the visible hue, the glory
of the realized form, instruments in the artist's hand so ineffective,
that they can answer no nobler purpose than the amusement of curiosity,
or the engagement of idleness? Must it not be owing to gross neglect or
misapplication of the means at his command, that while words and tones
(means of representing nature surely less powerful than lines and
colors) can kindle and purify the very inmost souls of men, the painter
can only hope to entertain by his efforts at expression, and must remain
forever brooding over his incommunicable thoughts?

The cause of the evil lies, I believe, deep-seated in the system of
ancient landscape art; it consists, in a word, in the painter's taking
upon him to modify God's works at his pleasure, casting the shadow of
himself on all he sees, constituting himself arbiter where it is honor
to be a disciple, and exhibiting his ingenuity by the attainment of
combinations whose highest praise is that they are impossible. We shall
not pass through a single gallery of old art, without hearing this topic
of praise confidently advanced. The sense of artificialness, the
absence of all appearance of reality, the clumsiness of combination by
which the meddling of man is made evident, and the feebleness of his
hand branded on the inorganization of his monstrous creature, is
advanced as a proof of inventive power, as an evidence of abstracted
conception;--nay, the violation of specific form, the utter abandonment
of all organic and individual character of object, (numberless examples
of which from the works of the old masters are given in the following
pages,) is constantly held up by the unthinking critic as the foundation
of the grand or historical style, and the first step to the attainment
of a pure ideal. Now, there is but one grand style, in the treatment of
all subjects whatsoever, and that style is based on the _perfect_
knowledge, and consists in the simple, unencumbered rendering, of the
specific characters of the given object, be it man, beast, or flower.
Every change, caricature, or abandonment of such specific character, is
as destructive of gr