wandering lines mixed
with the radiating ones, and radiating lines with the wild ones: and if
he takes the pen, and tries to copy either of these examples, he will
find that neither play of hand to left nor to right, neither a free
touch nor a firm touch, nor any learnable or describable touch
whatsoever, will enable him to produce, currently, a resemblance of it;
but that he must either draw it slowly or give it up. And (which makes
the matter worse still) though gathering the bough, and putting it close
to you, or seeing a piece of near foliage against the sky, you may draw
the entire outline of the leaves, yet if the spray has light upon it,
and is ever so little a way off, you will miss, as we have seen, a point
of a leaf here, and an edge there; some of the surfaces will be confused
by glitter, and some spotted with shade; and if you look carefully
through this confusion for the edges or dark stems which you really
_can_ see and put only those down, the result will be neither like Fig.
9 nor Fig. 24, but such an interrupted and puzzling piece of work as
Fig. 25.[32]

[Illustration: FIG. 25.]

[Illustration: FIG. 24.]

132. Now, it is in the perfect acknowledgment and expression of these
_three_ laws that all good drawing of landscape consists. There is,
first, the organic unity; the law, whether of radiation, or parallelism,
or concurrent action, which rules the masses of herbs and trees, of
rocks, and clouds, and waves; secondly, the individual liberty of the
members subjected to these laws of unity; and, lastly, the mystery under
which the separate character of each is more or less concealed.

I say, first, there must be observance of the ruling organic law. This
is the first distinction between good artists and bad artists. Your
common sketcher or bad painter puts his leaves on the trees as if they
were moss tied to sticks; he cannot see the lines of action or growth;
he scatters the shapeless clouds over his sky, not perceiving the sweeps
of associated curves which the real clouds are following as they fly;
and he breaks his mountain side into rugged fragments, wholly
unconscious of the lines of force with which the real rocks have risen,
or of the lines of couch in which they repose. On the contrary, it is
the main delight of the great draughtsman to trace these laws of
government; and his tendency to error is always in the exaggeration of
their authority rather than in its denial.

133. Secondly, I say,