d be a
miracle. Of similar self-taught painters we have abundant examples in
our aborigines,--but nowhere else.

But, while we maintain, as a positive law of our nature, the necessity
of mental intercourse with our fellow-creatures, in order to the full
developement of the _individual_, we are far from implying that
any thing which is actually taken from others can by any process
become our own, that is, original. We may reverse, transpose,
diminish, or add to it, and so skilfully that no scam or mutilation
shall be detected; and yet we shall not make it appear original,--in
other words, _true_, the offspring of _one_ mind. A borrowed
thought will always be borrowed; as it will be felt as such in its
_effect_, even while we are ourselves unconscious of the fact:
for it will want that _effect of life_, which only the first mind
can give it[3].

Of the multifarious retailers of the second-hand in style, the class
is so numerous as to make a selection difficult: they meet us at every
step in the history of the Art. One instance, however, may suffice,
and we select Vernet, as uniting in himself a singular and striking
example of the _false_ and the _true_; and also as the least
invidious instance, inasmuch as we may prove our position by opposing
him to himself.

In the landscapes of Vernet, (when not mere views,) we see the
imitator of Salvator, or rather copyist of his lines; and these we
have in all their angular nakedness, where rocks, trees, and mountains
are so jagged, contorted, and tumbled about, that nothing but an
explosion could account for their assemblage. They have not the
relation which we sometimes find even in a random collocation, as in
the accidental pictures of a discolored wall; for the careful hand
of the contriver is traced through all this disorder; nay, the very
execution, the conventional dash of pencil, betrays what a lawyer
would call the _malice prepense_ of the Artist in their strange
disfigurement. To many this may appear like hypercriticism; but we
sincerely believe that no one, even among his admirers, has ever been
deceived into a real sympathy with such technical flourishes: they
are felt as factitious; as mere diagrams of composition deduced from
pictures.

Now let us look at one of his Storms at Sea, when he wrought from his
own mind. A dark leaden atmosphere prepares us for something fearful:
suddenly a scene of tumult, fierce, wild, disastrous, bursts upon us;
and we feel the