and therefore assured of the ultimate prevalence and victory of
the principles which I have advocated, and equally confident that the
strength of the cause must give weight to the strokes of even the
weakest of its defenders, I permitted myself to yield to a somewhat
hasty and hot-headed desire of being, at whatever risk, in the thick of
the fire, and began the contest with a part, and that the weakest and
least considerable part, of the forces at my disposal. And I now find
the volume thus boldly laid before the public in a position much
resembling that of the Royal Sovereign at Trafalgar, receiving,
unsupported, the broadsides of half the enemy's fleet, while unforeseen
circumstances have hitherto prevented, and must yet for a time prevent,
my heavier ships of the line from taking any part in the action. I
watched the first moments of the struggle with some anxiety for the
solitary vessel,--an anxiety which I have now ceased to feel,--for the
flag of truth waves brightly through the smoke of the battle, and my
antagonists, wholly intent on the destruction of the leading ship, have
lost their position, and exposed themselves in defenceless disorder to
the attack of the following columns.

If, however, I have had no reason to regret my hasty advance, as far as
regards the ultimate issue of the struggle, I have yet found it to
occasion much misconception of the character, and some diminution of
the influence, of the present essay. For though the work has been
received as only in sanguine moments I had ventured to hope, though I
have had the pleasure of knowing that in many instances its principles
have carried with them a strength of conviction amounting to a
demonstration of their truth, and that, even where it has had no other
influence, it has excited interest, suggested inquiry, and prompted to a
just and frank comparison of Art with Nature; yet this effect would have
been greater still, had not the work been supposed, as it seems to have
been by many readers, a completed treatise, containing a systematized
statement of the whole of my views on the subject of modern art.
Considered as such, it surprises me that the book should have received
the slightest attention. For what respect could be due to a writer who
pretended to criticise and classify the works of the great painters of
landscape, without developing, or even alluding to, one single principle
of the beautiful or sublime? So far from being a completed essay, i