And Birmingham and Manchester arose in their might--and Art
was relegated to the curiosity shop.

* * * * *

Nature contains the elements, in colour and form, of all pictures, as
the keyboard contains the notes of all music.

But the artist is born to pick, and choose, and group with
science, these elements, that the result may be beautiful--as the
musician gathers his notes, and forms his chords, until he bring forth
from chaos glorious harmony.

To say to the painter, that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say
to the player, that he may sit on the piano.

That Nature is always right, is an assertion, artistically, as untrue,
as it is one whose truth is universally taken for granted. Nature is
very rarely right, to such an extent even, that it might almost be
said that Nature is usually wrong: that is to say, the condition of
things that shall bring about the perfection of harmony worthy a
picture is rare, and not common at all.

This would seem, to even the most intelligent, a doctrine almost
blasphemous. So incorporated with our education has the supposed
aphorism become, that its belief is held to be part of our moral
being, and the words themselves have, in our ear, the ring of
religion. Still, seldom does Nature succeed in producing a picture.

The sun blares, the wind blows from the east, the sky is bereft of
cloud, and without, all is of iron. The windows of the Crystal Palace
are seen from all points of London. The holiday-maker rejoices
in the glorious day, and the painter turns aside to shut his eyes.

How little this is understood, and how dutifully the casual in Nature
is accepted as sublime, may be gathered from the unlimited admiration
daily produced by a very foolish sunset.

The dignity of the snow-capped mountain is lost in distinctness, but
the joy of the tourist is to recognise the traveller on the top. The
desire to see, for the sake of seeing, is, with the mass, alone the
one to be gratified, hence the delight in detail.

And when the evening mist clothes the riverside with poetry, as with a
veil, and the poor buildings lose themselves in the dim sky, and the
tall chimneys become campanili, and the warehouses are palaces in the
night, and the whole city hangs in the heavens, and fairyland is
before us--then the wayfarer hastens home; the working man and the
cultured one, the wise man and the one of pleasure, cease to
understand, as they have ceased to