at requires the most industrious
efforts to reach: both originate in Nature, but the latter is 'Nature to
advantage dressed.'

Nature, the best source we can go to for instruction, is '_always at
hand_!'--'but Nature herself is not to be too closely copied. There are
excellencies in the art of painting beyond what is commonly called the
imitation of Nature. A mere copyer of Nature can never produce any thing
great; for the works of Nature are full of disproportion.' It is the
_beau ideal_ of the mind alone that reaches this great end. It is
_comparing_ our observations _on_ Nature, that enables us to acquire
this ideal perfection. It is to skill in _selection_, and the separating
her beauties from her defects, that qualifies us to reach this grand
acquisition, which cannot be reduced to practical principles; but, by
being enabled to discover those defects, we learn the art of supplying
her wants. 'Correcting Nature by herself--her imperfect state by her
more perfect,'--'and Nature denies her instructions to none who desire
to become her pupils.'

Young people, and even men and women, who make respectable, and often
very excellent _copies_ from the works of others, frequently show me
their 'sketches from Nature;'--Oh, if Nature could see them--for, to say
they are in general perfectly frightful, is to use the gentlest
expression. I invariably trace, in these productions, their
_individuality_ is the cause of their unsuccess; and the incapacity to
_even see Nature generally_, which must be necessary before they can
paint her so.

Thus to abstract as it were her beauties, and to form _one general idea_
of them, in that abstract, is to enlarge the sphere of our
understandings, and invest our works with that intellectual grandeur
which _alone_ lifts them above the efforts of common minds, by the
nobleness of conception, and a higher degree of excellence: while the
student may be assured that his reputation will become permanent and
universal, from this system of contemplating Nature in the abstract, and
ennoble all he undertakes. His picture will have a mental effect over
all that is mechanical.

Dr. Johnson has most ably explained the hypothesis, so much urged by his
friend, of the necessity of _generalizing_ our ideas of Nature, when he
says, 'It is not to examine the individual, but the species; to remark
general properties and large appearances: he does not number the streaks
of the tulip, nor describe the different