leted to the last line
compatible with the dignity and simplicity of the whole, wrought out
with that noblest industry which concentrates profusion into point, and
transforms accumulation into structure; neither must this labor be
bestowed on every subject which appears to afford a capability of good,
but on chosen subjects in which nature has prepared to the artist's hand
the purest sources of the impression he would convey. These may be
humble in their order, but they must be perfect of their kind. There is
a perfection of the hedgerow and cottage, as well as of the forest and
the palace, and more ideality in a great artist's selection and
treatment of roadside weeds and brook-worn pebbles, than in all the
struggling caricature of the meaner mind which heaps its foreground with
colossal columns, and heaves impossible mountains into the encumbered
sky. Finally, these chosen subjects must not be in any way repetitions
of one another, but each founded on a new idea, and developing a totally
distinct train of thought; so that the work of the artist's life should
form a consistent series of essays, rising through the scale of creation
from the humblest scenery to the most exalted; each picture being a
necessary link in the chain, based on what preceded, introducing to what
is to follow, and all, in their lovely system, exhibiting and drawing
closer the bonds of nature to the human heart. Since, then, I shall
have to reprobate the absence of study in the moderns nearly as much as
its false direction in the ancients, my task will naturally divide
itself into three portions. In the first, I shall endeavor to
investigate and arrange the facts of nature with scientific accuracy;
showing as I proceed, by what total neglect of the very first base and
groundwork of their art the idealities of some among the old masters are
produced. This foundation once securely laid, I shall proceed, in the
second portion of the work, to analyze and demonstrate the nature of the
emotions of the Beautiful and Sublime; to examine the particular
characters of every kind of scenery, and to bring to light, as far as
may be in my power, that faultless, ceaseless, inconceivable,
inexhaustible loveliness, which God has stamped upon all things, if man
will only receive them as He gives them. Finally, I shall endeavor to
trace the operation of all this on the hearts and minds of men; to
exhibit the moral function and end of art, to prove the share which it