form too often the only ideal of Western
landscape."

Great Chinese artists unite in dismissing fidelity to outline as of
little importance compared with reproduction of the spirit of the object
painted. To paint a tree successfully, it is necessary to produce not
merely shape and colour but the vitality and "soul" of the original.
Until with the last two or three centuries, nature itself was always
appealed to as the one source of true inspiration; then came the artist
of the studio, since which time Chinese art has languished, while
Japanese art, learned at the feet of Chinese artists from the fourteenth
century onwards, has come into prominent notice, and is now, with
extraordinary versatility, attempting to assimilate the ideals of the
West.

The following words were written by a Chinese painter of the fifth
century:--

"To gaze upon the clouds of autumn, a soaring exaltation in the soul; to
feel the spring breeze stirring wild exultant thoughts;--what is there
in the possession of gold and gems to compare with delights like these?
And then, to unroll the portfolio and spread the silk, and to transfer
to it the glories of flood and fell, the green forest, the blowing
winds, the white water of the rushing cascade, as with a turn of the
hand a divine influence descends upon the scene. . . . These are the
joys of painting."

Just as in poetry, so in pictorial art, the artist avoids giving full
expression to his theme, and leaving nothing for the spectator to supply
by his own imaginative powers. "Suggestion" is the key-note to both the
above arts; and in both, "Impressionism" has been also at the command
of the gifted, centuries before the term had passed into the English
language.

Literature and art are indeed very closely associated in China. Every
literary man is supposed to be more or less a painter, or a musician of
sorts; failing personal skill, it would go without saying that he was a
critic, or at the lowest a lover, of one or the other art, or of both.
All Chinese men, women and children seem to love flowers; and the poetry
which has gathered around the blossoms of plum and almond alone would
form a not inconsiderable library of itself. Yet a European bouquet
would appear to a man of culture as little short of a monstrosity; for
to enjoy flowers, a Chinaman must see only a single spray at a time. The
poorly paid clerk will bring with him to his office in the morning some
trifling bud, which he will st