elicately moulded, the next more gracefully bent--each broken into
differently modelled and variously numbered groups, the variety is
doubly striking, because contrasted with the perfect symmetry of which
it forms a part. Hence, the importance of the truth, that nature never
lets one of the members of even her most disciplined groups of cloud be
like another; but though each is adapted for the same function, and in
its great features resembles all the others, not one, out of the
millions with which the sky is checkered, is without a separate beauty
and character, appearing to have had distinct thought occupied in
its conception, and distinct forces in its production; and in addition
to this perpetual invention, visible in each member of each system, we
find systems of separate cloud intersecting one another, the sweeping
lines mingled and interwoven with the rigid bars, these in their turn
melting into banks of sand-like ripple and flakes of drifted and
irregular foam; under all, perhaps the massy outline of some lower cloud
moves heavily across the motionless buoyancy of the upper lines, and
indicates at once their elevation and their repose.

Sec. 9. Total absence of even the slightest effort at their representation,
in ancient landscape.

Such are the great attributes of the upper cloud region; whether they
are beautiful, valuable, or impressive, it is not our present business
to decide, nor to endeavor to discover the reason of the somewhat
remarkable fact, that the whole field of ancient landscape art affords,
as far as we remember, but one instance of any effort whatever to
represent the character of this cloud region. That one instance is the
landscape of Rubens in our own gallery, in which the mottled or fleecy
sky is given with perfect truth and exquisite beauty. To this should
perhaps be added, some of the backgrounds of the historical painters,
where horizontal lines were required, and a few level bars of white or
warm color cross the serenity of the blue. These, as far as they go, are
often very perfect, and the elevation and repose of their effect might,
we should have thought, have pointed out to the landscape painters that
there was something (I do not say much, but certainly something) to be
made out of the high clouds. Not one of them, however, took the hint. To
whom, among them all, can we look for the slightest realization of the
fine and faithful descriptive passage of the "Excursion," alrea