ll our hearts and painted with all our skill.

76. I told you also that no complete system of art for either natural
history or landscape could be formed on this system; that the wrath of
a wild beast, and the tossing of a mountain torrent are equally
impossible to a painter of the purist school; that in higher fields of
thought increasing knowledge means increasing sorrow, and every art
which has complete sympathy with humanity must be chastened by the
sight and oppressed by the memory of pain. But there is no reason why
your system of study should be a complete one, if it be right and
profitable though incomplete. If you can find it in your hearts to
follow out only the Gothic thoughts of landscape, I deeply wish you
would, and for many reasons.

77. First, it has never yet received due development; for at the
moment when artistic skill and knowledge of effect became sufficient
to complete its purposes, the Reformation destroyed the faith in which
they might have been accomplished; for to the whole body of powerful
draughtsmen the Reformation meant the Greek school and the shadow of
death. So that of exquisitely developed Gothic landscape you may count
the examples on the fingers of your hand: Van Eyck's "Adoration of the
Lamb" at Bruges; another little Van Eyck in the Louvre; the John
Bellini lately presented to the National Gallery;[12] another John
Bellini in Rome: and the "St. George" of Carpaccio at Venice, are all
that I can name myself of great works. But there exist some exquisite,
though feebler, designs in missal painting; of which, in England, the
landscape and flowers in the Psalter of Henry the Sixth will serve you
for a sufficient type; the landscape in the Grimani missal at Venice
being monumentally typical and perfect.

[Footnote 12: No. 812. "Landscape, with the Death of St. Peter
Martyr."]

78. Now for your own practice in this, having first acquired the skill
of exquisite delineation and laying of pure color, day by day you must
draw some lovely natural form or flower or animal without
obscurity--as in missal painting; choosing for study, in natural
scenes, only what is beautiful and strong in life.

79. I fully anticipated, at the beginning of the Pre-Raphaelite
movement, that they would have carried forward this method of work;
but they broke themselves to pieces by pursuing dramatic sensation
instead of beauty. So that to this day all the loveliest things in the
world remain unpainted; and