eat
principles of truth are deducible from their observation. First, place
an object as close to the eye as you like, there is always something in
it which you _cannot_ see, except in the hinted and mysterious manner
above described. You can see the texture of a piece of dress, but you
cannot see the individual threads which compose it, though they are all
felt, and have each of them influence on the eye. Secondly, place an
object as far from the eye as you like, and until it becomes itself a
mere spot, there is always something in it which you _can_ see, though
only in the hinted manner above described. Its shadows and lines and
local colors are not lost sight of as it retires; they get mixed and
indistinguishable, but they are still there, and there is a difference
always perceivable between an object possessing such details and a flat
or vacant space. The grass blades of a meadow a mile off, are so far
discernible that there will be a marked difference between its
appearance and that of a piece of wood painted green. And thus nature is
never distinct and never vacant, she is always mysterious, but always
abundant; you always see something, but you never see all.

And thus arise that exquisite finish and fulness which God has appointed
to be the perpetual source of fresh pleasure to the cultivated and
observant eye,--a finish which no distance can render invisible, and no
nearness comprehensible; which in every stone, every bough, every cloud,
and every wave is multiplied around us, forever presented, and forever
exhaustless. And hence in art, every space or touch in which we can see
everything, or in which we can see nothing, is false. Nothing can be
true which is either complete or vacant; every touch is false which does
not suggest more than it represents, and every space is false which
represents nothing.

Sec. 5. Complete violation of both these principles by the old masters.
They are either distinct or vacant.

Now, I would not wish for any more illustrative or marked examples of
the total contradiction of these two great principles, than the
landscape works of the old masters, taken as a body:--the Dutch masters
furnishing the cases of seeing everything, and the Italians of seeing
nothing. The rule with both is indeed the same, differently applied.
"You shall see the bricks in the wall, and be able to count them, or you
shall see nothing but a dead flat;" but the Dutch give you the bricks,
and the I