eat, is physically impossible. Hence these mountains of
Claude, having no indication of the steep vertical summits which we have
shown to be the characteristic of the central ridges, having soft edges
instead of decisive ones, simple forms (one line to the plain on each
side) instead of varied and broken ones, and being painted with a crude
raw white, having no transparency, nor filminess, nor air in it, instead
of rising in the opalescent mystery which invariably characterizes the
distant snows, have the forms and the colors of heaps of chalk in a
lime-kiln, not of Alps. They are destitute of energy, of height, of
distance, of splendor, and of variety, and are the work of a man,
whether Claude or not, who had neither feeling for nature, nor knowledge
of art.

Sec. 11. Even in his best works.

I should not, however, insist upon the faults of this picture, believing
it to be a copy, if I had ever seen, even in his most genuine works, an
extreme distance of Claude with any of the essential characters of
nature. But although in his better pictures we have always beautiful
drawing of the _air_, which in the copy before us is entirely wanting,
the real features of the extreme mountain distance are equally neglected
or maligned in all. There is, indeed, air between us and it; but ten
miles, not seventy miles, of space. Let us observe a little more closely
the practice of nature in such cases.

Sec. 12. Farther illustration of the distant character of mountain chains.

Sec. 13. Their excessive appearance of transparency.

The multiplicity of form which I have shown to be necessary in the
outline, is not less felt in the body of the mass. For, in all extensive
hill ranges, there are five or six lateral chains separated by deep
valleys, which rise between the spectator and the central ridge, showing
their tops one over another, wave beyond wave, until the eye is carried
back to the faintest and highest forms of the principal chain. These
successive ridges, and I speak now not merely of the Alps, but of
mountains generally, even as low as 3000 feet above the sea, show
themselves in extreme distance merely as vertical shades, with very
sharp outlines, detached from one another by greater intensity,
according to their nearness. It is with the utmost difficulty that the
eye can discern any solidity or roundness in them; the lights and shades
of solid form are both equally lost in the blue of the atmosphere, and
the mountain