then, though it may surprise us into momentary
admiration to recognize familiar things in this translation,--just as
common talk sounds finer in a foreign tongue,--yet it is but for a time,
and then the inevitable limitations of the counterfeit come in,--its
narrowness and fixity,--crude paint for sunbeams, cold and colorless
stone for the living form. The only test of a work of Art is, how far it
will carry us,--not any comparison by the yardstick. We demand to be
raised above our habitual point of view, and be made aware of a deeper
interest than we knew of. It is in hope of this alone that we pardon the
necessary shortcoming of the means.

This deeper interest has its root in nothing arbitrary, or personal to
the artist. It is not inventing something finer than Nature, but seeing
more truly what Nature shows, that makes the artistic faculty. This is
the lesson taught by the history of Art. Take it up where you will, this
history is nothing but the successive unfolding of a truer conception of
Nature, only speaking here the language of form and color, instead of
words. It is this that lies at the bottom of all its revolutions, and
appears in its downfall as well as in its prosperity.

Where the human form is the theme, the aim must of course be to give its
typical perfection. No naturalist describes the defects of his
specimens, though it may happen that all are imperfect. Comparatively
few persons ever saw our robin in the plumage in which it is always
described. Only in early spring, not very commonly then, is the black of
the head and tail seen pure. But no one hesitates to call this the true
color. The sculptor does not reproduce the peculiarities of his model,
but aims to give ideal form as the most natural form of man.

But in Painting, and especially in Landscape, it seems less easy to fix
upon any ideal, not only from the multifariousness of the details, but,
above all, from the elusiveness of the standard. We might agree upon an
ideal of human beauty, but hardly upon the ideal of anything else. The
sophist in the Hippias Major was prepared to define the beauty of a
maiden, or of a mare; but he was confounded when it was required that
the beauty of a pipkin should be deducible from the same principle, and
yet worse when it was shown to involve that a wooden spoon was more
beautiful than a gold one.

What you see in the woods and mountains depends on what you go for and
what you carry with you. We may go to