es noted of Tintoret's, (Vol. II., Part III. Ch. 3,) are perhaps
hardly enough on which to found an exception in his favor.) He is the
only painter who ever drew the stem of a tree, Titian having come the
nearest before him, and excelling him in the muscular development of the
larger trunks, (though sometimes losing the woody strength in a
serpent-like flaccidity,) but missing the grace and character of the
ramifications. He is the only painter who has ever represented the
surface of calm, or the force of agitated water; who has represented the
effects of space on distant objects, or who has rendered the abstract
beauty of natural color. These assertions I make deliberately, after
careful weighing and consideration, in no spirit of dispute, or
momentary zeal; but from strong and convinced feeling, and with the
consciousness of being able to prove them.

Sec. 47. Difficulty of demonstration in such subjects.

This proof is only partially and incidentally attempted in the present
portion of this work, which was originally written, as before explained,
for a temporary purpose, and which, therefore, I should have gladly
cancelled, but that, relating as it does only to simple matters of fact
and not to those of feeling, it may still, perhaps, be of service to
some readers who would be unwilling to enter into the more speculative
fields with which the succeeding sections are concerned. I leave,
therefore, nearly as it was originally written, the following
examination of the relative truthfulness of elder and of recent art;
always requesting the reader to remember, as some excuse for the
inadequate execution, even of what I have here attempted, how difficult
it is to express or explain, by language only, those delicate qualities
of the object of sense, on the seizing of which all refined truth of
representation depends. Try, for instance, to explain in language the
exact qualities of the lines on which depend the whole truth and beauty
of expression about the half-opened lips of Raffaelle's St. Catherine.
There is, indeed, nothing in landscape so ineffable as this; but there
is no part nor portion of God's works in which the delicacy appreciable
by a cultivated eye, and necessary to be rendered in art, is not beyond
all expression and explanation; I cannot tell it you, if you do not see
it. And thus I have been entirely unable, in the following pages, to
demonstrate clearly anything of really deep and perfect truth; nothing