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tract from the value of his writings. But while we admit this, and also that his ideas that a great artist can be developed by this extreme attention to the correct drawing of details and the acquirement of scientific knowledge, and that any good can be done by teaching the necessity of minute study of phenomena after the artist has once learned the proper use of his materials, are quite wrong, yet how true and noble his opinions on the whole question of art can be at times is shown when he comes under the spell of the overpowering genius of Turner, who with all his knowledge subjected everything to the higher ends of mystery and imagination. Then Ruskin realizes the true power of art and the great achievements of its supreme masters, and sees that his theories only apply to minor matters, and he gives expression to his thoughts in such fine passages as these:

1 "Modern landscape painters, rejecting all "Modern idea of bona fide imitation, think only of con

veying the impression of nature into the mind of the spectator."

Painters."
Vol. I.

Page 75.

2 Ibid. Vol.

I. Pages 43

"The landscape painter must have two to 46.

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great and distinct aims- the first to induce in the spectator's mind the faithful conception of natural objects, and the second to inform him of the thoughts and feelings with which they were regarded by the artist himself. The artist talks to him and makes him a sharer in his own strong feelings. He endows him with the impetuous emotions of a nobler and more penetrating intelligence. The artist cannot attain the second end without having previously reached the first, and this is why, though I consider the second as the real and only important end of all art, I call the representation of facts the first end, because it is necessary to the other and must be attained before it. And thus though we want the thoughts and feelings of the artist as well as the truth, yet they must be thoughts arising out of the knowledge of truth, and feelings arising out of the contemplation of truth."

"Nature is always mysterious and secret in her use of means, and art is always likest her when it is most inexplicable."

"As people try honestly to see all they can of anything, they come to a point where a

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PLATE XIII. Paysage. J. B. C. Corot.

noble dimness begins. They see more than others, but they feel they cannot see all, and the more intense their perception the more the crowd of things which they partly see will multiply upon them, and their delight may at last principally consist in dwelling on this cloudy part of their prospect, somewhat casting aside what to them has become comparatively common, but is perhaps all that other people see."

Painters."

"It is impossible to go too finely or think "Modern too much about details in landscape so that Vol. I. they be rightly arranged and rightly massed; Page 199. but it is equally impossible to render anything like the fulness or the space of nature, except by that mystery or obscurity of execution which she herself uses."

Vol. IV.

Page 23.

"The aim of the great inventive landscape Ibid. painter must be to give the far higher and deeper truth of mental vision, rather than that of the physical facts, and to reach a representation which, though it may be, when tried by rule and measure, totally unlike the place, shall yet be capable of producing on the beholder's mind the impression which the reality

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