form coming against bright sky, is truly drawn by a
photograph; and if you once succeed in drawing a few sprays rightly, you
will find the result much more lovely and interesting than any
photograph can be.

83. All this difficulty, however, attaches to the rendering merely the
dark form of the sprays as they come against the sky. Within those
sprays, and in the heart of the tree, there is a complexity of a much
more embarrassing kind; for nearly all leaves have some luster, and all
are more or less translucent (letting light through them); therefore, in
any given leaf, besides the intricacies of its own proper shadows and
foreshortenings, there are three series of circumstances which alter or
hide its forms. First, shadows cast on it by other leaves,--often very
forcibly. Secondly, light reflected from its lustrous surface, sometimes
the blue of the sky, sometimes the white of clouds, or the sun itself
flashing like a star. Thirdly, forms and shadows of other leaves, seen
as darknesses through the translucent parts of the leaf; a most
important element of foliage effect, but wholly neglected by landscape
artists in general.

84. The consequence of all this is, that except now and then by chance,
the form of a complete leaf is never seen; but a marvelous and quaint
confusion, very definite, indeed, in its evidence of direction of
growth, and unity of action, but wholly indefinable and inextricable,
part by part, by any amount of patience. You cannot possibly work it out
in facsimile, though you took a twelvemonth's time to a tree; and you
must therefore try to discover some mode of execution which will more or
less imitate, by its own variety and mystery, the variety and mystery of
Nature, without absolute delineation of detail.

85. Now I have led you to this conclusion by observation of tree form
only, because in that the thing to be proved is clearest. But no natural
object exists which does not involve in some part or parts of it this
inimitableness, this mystery of quantity, which needs peculiarity of
handling and trick of touch to express it completely. If leaves are
intricate, so is moss, so is foam, so is rock cleavage, so are fur and
hair, and texture of drapery, and of clouds. And although methods and
dexterities of handling are wholly useless if you have not gained first
the thorough knowledge of the form of the thing; so that if you cannot
draw a branch perfectly, then much less a tree; and if not a wreath