dows which they cast, and the air which stirs them.
These tree-leaves are not only green, or yellow, or russet, they are
tender, or crisp living leaves. One half expects to see the birds'
throats swell, and hear the sweetness or the shrillness of their songs.

The first picture, with all its correctness, brightness, richness, or
delicacy it may be, remains bare, hard, and barren, compared to the
second. I cannot explain to my readers the cause of the difference, I
can Only show it to them as they may see it for themselves, and say
that I suppose it proceeds from this--that the second painter has seen
farther into the heart of nature than the first, and has been able by
subtler touches to make us see with his eyes.

But imaginative landscape is much more than this vivid feeling and
expression of nature; there is not a cloud, or leaf, or bird too many or
out of keeping with the place and the hour. The clouds are the very
clouds of sunset, or sunrise, or high noon--clouds differing widely from
each other, as you have no doubt observed. The trees are the beeches, or
chestnuts, or pines, which would grow on the conformation of rocks, in
the sheltered nook, or on the breezy upland; the birds are the linnets
or the larks, the thrushes or the lapwings, which frequent these special
trees, and may be seen and heard at this particular hour.

Again, landscape often tells a story, and tells it inimitably. My
readers have heard of the ballad of the 'Two Corbies,' which the writer
of the ballad has made to meet and tell gruesomely where and on what
carrion their feast has been. Suppose the writer of the ballad had been
a painter, he might have painted the story as intelligibly by the lone
hill-side, the bleaching bones of the faithful hound and gallant grey,
the two loathly blue-black birds satiated with their prey. There is a
significant old Scotch song with a ballad ring, by Lady Nairne, two
verses of which form each a complete picture not only of different
seasons, but of different phases of feeling--happiness and misery.

'Bonnie ran the burnie down,
Wandering and winding;
Sweetly sang the birds aboon,
Care never minding.

'But now the burn comes down apace,
Roaring and reaming,
And for the wee birdies' sang
Wild howlets screaming.'

Imagine these two verses painted, and the painter, from a lack of
comprehension, introducing the 'wild howlets screaming' _beside the
burnie_, 'wandering and w