ne of a mountain; and as for lakes, they merely showed they knew
the difference between salt and fresh water by the fish they put into
each." Then he would pass on to mediaeval art; and still he would be
obliged to repeat: "Mountains! I remember none. Some careless and
jagged arrangements of blue spires or spikes on the horizon, and, here
and there, an attempt at representing an overhanging rock with a hole
through it; but merely in order to divide the light behind some human
figure. Lakes! No, nothing of the kind,--only blue bays of sea put in
to fill up the background when the painter could not think of anything
else. Broken-down buildings! No; for the most part very complete and
well-appointed buildings, if any; and never buildings at all, but to
give place or explanation to some circumstance of human conduct." And
then he would look up again to the modern pictures, observing, with an
increasing astonishment, that here the human interest had, in many
cases, altogether disappeared. That mountains, instead of being used
only as a blue ground for the relief of the heads of saints, were
themselves the exclusive subjects of reverent contemplation; that
their ravines, and peaks, and forests, were all painted with an
appearance of as much enthusiasm as had formerly been devoted to the
dimple of beauty, or the frowns of asceticism; and that all the living
interest which was still supposed necessary to the scene, might be
supplied by a traveller in a slouched hat, a beggar in a scarlet
cloak, or, in default of these, even by a heron or a wild duck.

And if he could entirely divest himself of his own modern habits of
thought, and regard the subjects in question with the feelings of a
knight or monk of the Middle Ages, it might be a question whether
those feelings would not rapidly verge towards contempt. "What!" he
might perhaps mutter to himself, "here are human beings spending the
whole of their lives in making pictures of bits of stone and runlets
of water, withered sticks and flying fogs, and actually not a picture
of the gods or the heroes! none of the saints or the martyrs! none of
the angels and demons! none of councils or battles, or any other
single thing worth the thought of a man! Trees and clouds indeed! as
if I should not see as many trees as I cared to see, and more, in the
first half of my day's journey to-morrow, or as if it mattered to any
man whether the sky were clear or cloudy, so long as his armour did
not