ified and
transfigured in his hands. There is no sadness or dejection in his
pictures, but a spirit of serene beauty, free from ostentation,
far-fetched contrast, or artificial glitter. Light breezes blow in
his splendid trees, golden light quivers through them, drawing the
eye to a bright misty horizon; we say with Uhland, 'The sky is
solemn, as if it would say "this is the day of the Lord."'

Artistic feeling for Nature became a worship with Claude Lorraine.

The Netherlands recorded all Nature's phases in noble emulation with
ever-increasing delight.

The poetry of air, cloudland, light, the cool freshness of morning,
the hazy sultriness of noon, the warm light of evening, it all lives
and moves in Cuyp's pictures and Wynant's, while Aart van der Meer
painted moonlight and winter snow, and Jan van Goyen the melancholy
of mist shot by sunlight. He, too--Jan van Goyen--was very clever in
producing effect with very small means, with a few trees reflected in
water, or a sand-heap--the art in which Ruysdael excelled all others.
The whole poetry of Nature--that secret magic which lies like a spell
over quiet wood, murmuring sea, still pool, and lonely pasture--took
form and colour under his hands; so little sufficed to enchant, to
rouse thought and feeling, and lead them whither he would. Northern
seriousness and sadness brood over most of his work; the dark trees
are overhung by heavy clouds and rain, mist and dusky shadows move
among his ruins. He had painted, says Carriere, the peace of woodland
solitude long before Tieck found the word for it.

Beechwoods reflected in a stream, misty cloud masses lighted by the
rising sun; he moves us with such things as with a morning hymn, and
his picture of a swollen torrent forcing its way between graves which
catch the last rays of the sun, while a cloud of rain shrouds the
ruins of a church in the background, is an elegy which has taken
shape and colour.

Ruysdael marks the culminating point of this period of development,
which had led from mere backgrounds and single traits of Nature--even
a flower stem or a blade of grass, up to elaborate compositions
imbued by a single motive, a single idea.

To conjure up with slight material a complete little world of its
own, and waken responsive feeling, is not this the secret of the
charm in the pictures of his school--in the wooded hill or peasant's
courtyard by Hobbema, the Norwegian mountain scene of Albert van
Everdingen, the