sters that I have ever seen; and I have seen enough to warrant my
affirming that if it occur anywhere, it must be through accident rather
than intention. Nor is there stronger evidence of any perception, on the
part of these much respected artists, that there were such things in the
world as mists or vapors. If a cloud under their direction ever touches
a mountain, it does it effectually and as if it meant to do it. There is
no mystifying the matter; here is a cloud, and there is a hill; if it is
to come on at all, it comes on to some purpose, and there is no hope of
its ever going off again. We have, therefore, little to say of the
efforts of the old masters, in any scenes which might naturally have
been connected with the clouds of the lowest region, except that the
faults of form specified in considering the central clouds, are, by way
of being energetic or sublime, more glaringly and audaciously committed
in their "storms;" and that what is a wrong form among clouds possessing
form, is there given with increased generosity of fiction to clouds
which have no form at all.

Sec. 7. The great power of the moderns in this respect.

Sec. 8. Works of Copley Fielding.

Sec. 9. His peculiar truth.

Sec. 10. His weakness and its probable cause.

Supposing that we had nothing to show in modern art, of the region of
the rain-cloud, but the dash of Cox, the blot of de Wint, or even the
ordinary stormy skies of the body of our inferior water-color painters,
we might yet laugh all efforts of the old masters to utter scorn. But
one among our water-color artists, deserves especial notice--before we
ascend the steps of the solitary throne--as having done in his peculiar
walk, what for faithful and pure truth, truth indeed of a limited range
and unstudied application, but yet most faithful and most pure, will
remain unsurpassed if not unrivalled,--Copley Fielding. We are well
aware how much of what he has done depends in a great degree upon
particular tricks of execution, or on a labor somewhat too mechanical to
be meritorious; that it is rather the _texture_ than the _plan_ of his
sky which is to be admired, and that the greater part of what is
pleasurable in it will fall rather under the head of dexterous imitation
than of definite thought. But whatever detractions from his merit we may
be compelled to make on these grounds, in considering art as the
embodying of beauty, or the channel of mind, it is impossible, when we
are s