e eye, compelled them to give up all idea of real relations of
retirement, and to represent a few successive and marked stages of
distance, like the scenes of a theatre, instead of the imperceptible,
multitudinous, symmetrical retirement of nature, who is not more careful
to separate her nearest bush from her farthest one, than to separate the
nearest bough of that bush from the one next to it.

Sec. 8. Comparison of N. Poussin's "Phocion,"

Take for instance, one of the finest landscapes that ancient art has
produced--the work of a really great and intellectual mind, the quiet
Nicholas Poussin, in our own National Gallery, with the traveller
washing his feet. The first idea we receive from this picture is, that
it is evening, and all the light coming from the horizon. Not so. It is
full moon, the light coming steep from the left, as is shown by the
shadow of the stick on the right-hand pedestal,--(for if the sun were
not very high, that shadow could not lose itself half way down, and if
it were not lateral, the shadow would slope, instead of being vertical.)
Now, ask yourself, and answer candidly, if those black masses of
foliage, in which scarcely any form is seen but the outline, be a true
representation of trees under noonday sunlight, sloping from the left,
bringing out, as it necessarily would do, their masses into golden
green, and marking every leaf and bough with sharp shadow and sparkling
light. The only truth in the picture is the exact pitch of relief
against the sky of both trees and hills, and to this the organization of
the hills, the intricacy of the foliage, and everything indicative
either of the nature of the light, or the character of the objects, are
unhesitatingly sacrificed. So much falsehood does it cost to obtain two
apparent truths of tone. Or take, as a still more glaring instance, No.
260 in the Dulwich Gallery, where the trunks of the trees, even of those
farthest off, on the left, are as black as paint can make them, and
there is not, and cannot be, the slightest increase of force, or any
marking whatsoever of distance by color, or any other means, between
them and the foreground.

Sec. 9. With Turner's "Mercury and Argus."

Compare with these, Turner's treatment of his materials in the Mercury
and Argus. He has here his light actually coming from the distance, the
sun being nearly in the centre of the picture, and a violent relief of
objects against it would be far more justifiable