ll
leave much to be desired; there is great heaviness in their shadows, the
material is never thoroughly vanquished, (though this partly for a very
noble reason, that the painter is always thinking of and referring to
nature, and indulges in no artistical conventionalities,) and sometimes
the handling appears feeble. In warmth, lightness, and transparency they
have no chance against Gainsborough; in clear skies and air tone they
are alike unfortunate when they provoke comparison with Claude; and in
force and solemnity they can in no wise stand with the landscape of the
Venetians.

The painter evidently felt that he had farther powers, and pressed
forward into the field where alone they could be brought into play. It
was impossible for him, with all his keen and long-disciplined
perceptions, not to feel that the real color of nature had never been
attempted by any school; and that though conventional representations
had been given by the Venetians of sunlight and twilight, by invariably
rendering the whites golden and the blues green, yet of the actual,
joyous, pure, roseate hues of the external world no record had ever been
given. He saw also that the finish and specific grandeur of nature had
been given, but her fulness, space, and mystery never; and he saw that
the great landscape painters had always sunk the lower middle tints of
nature in extreme shade, bringing the entire melody of color as many
degrees down as their possible light was inferior to nature's; and that
in so doing a gloomy principle had influenced them even in their choice
of subject.

For the conventional color he substituted a pure straightforward
rendering of fact, as far as was in his power; and that not of such fact
as had been before even suggested, but of all that is _most_ brilliant,
beautiful, and inimitable; he went to the cataract for its iris, to the
conflagration for its flames, asked of the sea its intensest azure, of
the sky its clearest gold. For the limited space and defined forms of
elder landscape, he substituted the quantity and the mystery of the
vastest scenes of earth; and for the subdued chiaroscuro he substituted
first a balanced diminution of oppositions throughout the scale, and
afterwards, in one or two instances, attempted the reverse of the old
principle, taking the lowest portion of the scale truly, and merging the
upper part in high light.

Sec. 45. Difficulties of his later manner. Resultant deficiencies.

Innov