s of art, or for the pre-Raphaelites of the nineteenth
century, who in their spirit beg that we accept their unctuous will for
the deed completely wrought. When however they do fill the condition of
natural aspect in its fundamental essence, in its condition of
non-violation of physical law, when, uncompromised by such discrepancy,
the presentment of the idea is complete and this alone engages us, the
work by virtue of its higher motive takes higher rank in the scale of art
than that in which the idea has been delegated to a place second to the
shell which encloses it. It is the art which fulfills both requirements
_with the idea paramount_ that has survived in all ages. The reverse
order is not sustained by the history of art. Mark the line from the
early masters to the present, do you not find the description includes
"the idealists" _who could paint?_ The list would be a long and involved
one, taking its start in Italy with Botticelli, Giotto, Fra Angelico,
Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Andrea del Sarto, Fra
Bartolomeo, Titian, Giorgione, and extending thence to our own time
inclusive of Millet, Corot, Watts, Turner, Blake, Rousseau, Mauve, Puvis
de Chavannes and Ryder--men of all complexions in art, and typical of many
more quite as diverse in their subjects and modes of expression but who
place the idea, the motive, the emotion, the type, before the thing
depicted. For them the letter of the law killeth, but the spirit giveth
life. This of course raises issue with the naturalistic school--a school
which believes in rendering Nature as she is, without rearrangement,
addition, substraction or idealization; a school presuming the artist to
be a copyist, and founded not on the _principles of design,_ but the _love
of nature._

Says W. J. Stillman in his impassioned polemic on "The Revival of Art":
"The painter whose devotion to nature is such that he never leaves or
varies from her, may be, and likely is, a happier man than if he were a
true artist...To men of the other type, the external image disturbs the
ideal which is so complete that it admits no interference. To them she
may offer suggestions, but lays down no law."

The complaint of Turner that Nature so frequently _put him out_ contains
for us what it should have expressed to Ruskin, the real attitude which he
held toward nature, but which Ruskin in his enthusiastic love of nature
did not, or would not perceive. What the master artist saw