me, so should we be by
thought; we pass over an extensive region, and the clouds of days and
of nights pursue us out of it, and we look back upon it in our memory,
as under another light--the land itself, by distance and by memory
making it a part of our minds, more than of our vision, becomes
fabulous; it is no longer one for common language, but for song; and
so the pencil that would paint it must be dipped in the colours of
poetry. Memory glazes, to use a technical word, every scene. "The
resounding sea and the shadowy mountains are far between us," as Homer
says, and those fabulous territories that we love to revisit in the
dreams of poetic night. There are no muses with their golden harps on
Highgate Hill; nor would the painter that would paint them be over
wise to expect a glimpse of their white feet on the real
Parnassus.[11] As to nature in art, we make too much of a little
truth, neglecting the greater. It is not every creation that is
revealed to the eye; even to adore and to admire properly, we must
imagine a more beautiful than we see. The inventions of genius are but
discoveries in regions of a higher nature.

"God's work invisible,
Not undiscover'd, their true stamp impress
On thought, creation's mirror, wherein do dwell
His unattained wonders numberless."

Of late years some painters have taken up the novelty of representing
scriptural subjects as under the actual scenery and climate of the
holy land, and attempted besides to portray the characteristics of the
race,--a thing never dreamed of by the great painters of history. They
are partial to skies hot and cloudless, and to European feelings not
agreeable; forgetful of a land of promise and of wonder, and that
these subjects belong, and must be modified to the mental vision of
every age and country. They abhor the voluminous and richly coloured
clouds, as unnatural. Can they not feel the passage--

"Who maketh the clouds his chariot?"

Let then, not only their forms, but their colours too, be as far as
may be worthy Him whom they are said to bear. They are, as it were,
the folding and unfolding volumes wherein the history of all creation
is written. As they are prominent in the language of poetry, so should
they ever be the materials for poetic art.

I speak of this noble character of cloud skies, because a writer of
more persuasive power than mature judgement,--the Author of "Modern
Painters,"--has condemned them; that