e different--their flowers, animals and forests are
different. By each order of landscape--and its orders, I repeat, are
infinite in number, corresponding not only to the several species of
rock, but to the particular circumstances of the rocks' deposition or
after treatment, and to the incalculable varieties of climate, aspect,
and human interference:--by each order of landscape, I say, peculiar
lessons are intended to be taught, and distinct pleasures to be
conveyed; and it is as utterly futile to talk of generalizing their
impressions into an ideal landscape, as to talk of amalgamating all
nourishment into one ideal food, gathering all music into one ideal
movement, or confounding all thought into one ideal idea.

There is, however, such a thing as composition of different orders of
landscape, though there can be no generalization of them. Nature herself
perpetually brings together elements of various expression. Her barren
rocks stoop through wooded promontories to the plain; and the wreaths of
the vine show through their green shadows the wan light of unperishing
snow.

The painter, therefore, has the choice of either working out the
isolated character of some one distinct class of scene, or of bringing
together a multitude of different elements, which may adorn each other
by contrast.

I believe that the simple and uncombined landscape, if wrought out with
due attention to the ideal beauty of the features it includes, will
always be the most powerful in its appeal to the heart. Contrast
increases the splendor of beauty, but it disturbs its influence; it adds
to its attractiveness, but diminishes its power. On this subject I shall
have much to say hereafter; at present I merely wish to suggest the
possibility, that the single-minded painter, who is working out on broad
and simple principles, a piece of unbroken, harmonious landscape
character, may be reaching an end in art quite as high as the more
ambitious student who is always "within five minutes' walk of
everywhere," making the ends of the earth contribute to his pictorial
guazzetto;[L] and the certainty, that unless the composition of the
latter be regulated by severe judgment, and its members connected by
natural links, it must become more contemptible in its motley, than an
honest study of roadside weeds.

Let me, at the risk of tediously repeating what is universally known,
refer to the common principles of historical composition, in order that
I may