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sources of pleasure open to us in Art into certain groups, which might
conveniently be studied in succession. After some preliminary
discussion, it was concluded that these groups were, in the main,
three; consisting, first, of the pleasures taken in perceiving simple
resemblance to Nature (Ideas of Truth); secondly, of the pleasures
taken in the beauty of the things chosen to be painted (Ideas of
Beauty); and, lastly, of pleasures taken in the meanings and relations
of these things (Ideas of Relation).

The first volume, treating of the ideas of Truth, was chiefly occupied
with an inquiry into the various success with which different artists
had represented the facts of Nature,--an inquiry necessarily conducted
very imperfectly, owing to the want of pictorial illustration.

The second volume merely opened the inquiry into the nature of ideas
of Beauty and Relation, by analysing (as far as I was able to do so)
the two faculties of the human mind which mainly seized such ideas;
namely, the contemplative and imaginative faculties.

It remains for us to examine the various success of artists,
especially of the great landscape-painter whose works have been
throughout our principal subject, in addressing these faculties of the
human mind, and to consider who among them has conveyed the noblest
ideas of beauty, and touched the deepest sources of thought.

I do not intend, however, now to pursue the inquiry in a method so
laboriously systematic; for the subject may, it seems to me, be more
usefully treated by pursuing the different questions which rise out of
it just as they occur to us, without too great scrupulousness in
marking connections, or insisting on sequences. Much time is wasted by
human beings, in general, on establishment of systems; and it often
takes more labour to master the intricacies of an artificial
connection, than to remember the separate facts which are so carefully
connected. I suspect that system-makers, in general, are not of much
more use, each in his own domain, than, in that of Pomona, the old
women who tie cherries upon sticks, for the more convenient
portableness of the same. To cultivate well, and choose well, your
cherries, is of some importance; but if they can be had in their own
wild way of clustering about their crabbed stalk, it is a better
connection for them than any other; and, if they cannot, then, so that
they be not bruised, it makes to a boy of a practical disposition not
mu