e wall.

It is not only the eye for natural scenery which has thus advanced in
the last three centuries from the perception of the individual parts to
the perception of the whole. We find the same phenomena in the case of
historical painters, and no less in that of the poets, musicians, and
scholars. A Bach suite, just like a Breughel landscape, has been, as it
were, worked out under the microscope, and nowadays it is easier to find
a hundred philosophers of history who are capable of constructing
history as a "work of art"--exceedingly well on the whole--than one
individual chronicler who would lose himself, with the dead
leaf-counting diligence of bygone centuries, in endless detail-work. We
look not only at landscapes but at the entire world more from the
viewpoint of the harmony of the whole than from that of the divergence
of the individual parts.

In helping us to gauge the eye for natural scenery of an age, the really
artistic portrayals are often far less accurate than the fashionable
articles manufactured, as it were, by the artistic handicraftsman, for
the latter best disclose to us the eye of the entire public. Hence, for
example, the popular passion for Rhine landscapes, Swiss pictures,
Italian views, etc., mechanically executed after a fixed model--which
periodically breaks forth only to vanish again--is more important for us
in this respect than the conception of many a leader of genius in the
art of landscape-painting, who may perhaps set the tone for the future
but seldom for the present. There exist special directions for making a
Rhine landscape and for infallibly bestowing upon it the genuine
coloring of the Rhine, which appeared in the book-market about a hundred
and fifty years ago, side by side with directions for preparing the best
vinegar, the best sealing-wax, etc.--I do not know whether it was also
sealed up as a secret recipe, as they were. By genuine Rhine coloring
was meant that sentimental, mistily indistinct tone in the dullest
possible half tints formerly so much in vogue. The fact that such a
booklet could be written and sold with profit affords us instructive
hints regarding the eye of the multitude for natural scenery in those
days, and the tone of that infallible Rhine coloring is, in its way,
also a color-tone of the age. Nowadays, when Alpine landscapes are
painted even on the rough stones from the Alpine rivers (for
paper-weights), it would be very easy to write out a recipe for g