Landscape art is something quite different from this. It cannot imitate nature. If it tries to do this it must fail, and give but a weak reflection of nature's inimitable pictures. But it can give, and it does give, in a very direct and sympathetic way, the effect produced on the artist by nature. It is the means the artist has of revealing the feelings that possess him in the presence of nature. This is its proper sphere, and in this only can it excel. It is not, as it is often supposed to be, something as like the solid earth as possible. It has a decided resemblance un-doubtedly, but its essence is spiritual and elusive. "The whole subject of landscape is a world of illusions; the only thing about Chap. II. P. G. Ham- it that is certainly not an illusion being the

"Landscape."

erton.

effect on the mind of each particular human
being who fancies that he sees something,
and knows that he feels something, when he
stands in the presence of nature. His feelings
are a reality, but with regard to that which
causes them, it is hard to say how much is
reality, and how much a phantom of the
mind."

(

PLATE II.

Adoration of the Lamb. Hubert and Jan Van Eyck.

Virgil" in "Essays,

And F. W. H. Myers explains the difficulty of expressing these feelings, while asserting the possibility of doing so, in the following interesting way: "The range of human thoughts "Essay on and emotions greatly transcends the range of such symbols as man has invented to express Classical." them; and it becomes the business of art to use these symbols in a double way. They must be used for the direct representation of thought and feeling; but they must also be combined with so subtle an imagination as to suggest much which there is no means of directly expressing. And this can be done, for experience shows that it is possible so to arrange forms, colours, and sounds as to stimulate the imagination in a new and inexplicable way.

It is thus seen that it is a very difficult thing to render in any branch of art the feelings inspired by nature. It is perhaps harder to do so in painting landscapes than in depicting the human form on canvas, or modelling it in sculpture, or by using the sounds of music, or the language of poetry. Certainly only a comparatively small number of those who attempt it attain success.

One of the strangest facts in the history of the human race is the complete disappearance of literature and art, which had reached such a high state of development among the Greeks, for a period of six hundred years, and their new birth in the twelfth century in Italy. In the period of their great prosperity the Greeks were the most intellectual and art-loving nation the world has ever seen. They had an intense love for the beautiful in nature and for its artistic rendering in poetry, painting, sculpture, and architecture. Though subdued later by their mighty opponents, the more practical Romans, the literature and art of the Greeks conquered their conquerors and flourished anew in the Augustan age in Rome, and their philosophy had a decided and lasting influence on the growing power of Christianity. The Romans had also a very great love for nature, and they had more of a feeling of sympathy with it than had the Greeks, more of the feeling of modern times, as the poetry of Virgil shows.

'Sunt lacrimæ rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt,"