lly
free, are not thoroughly drawn or rounded; and in the mass of the tree,
though well formed, the tremulousness and transparency of leafage are
lost. Nor is it possible, by Harding's manner of drawing, to express
such ultimate truths; his execution, which, _in its way_, no one can at
all equal (the best chalk drawing of Calame and other foreign masters
being quite childish and feeble in comparison), is yet sternly limited
in its reach, being originally based on the assumption that nothing is
to be delicately drawn, and that the method is only good which insures
specious incompletion.

It will be observed, also, that there is a leaning first to one side,
then to the other, in Harding's aspen, which marks the wild
picturesqueness of modernism as opposed to the quiet but stiff dignity
of the purist (Fig. 2); Turner occupying exactly the intermediate place.

The next example (Fig. 5) is an aspen of Constable's, on the left in
the frontispiece to Mr. Leslie's life of him. Here we have arrived at
the point of total worthlessness, the tree being as flat as the old
purist one, but, besides, wholly false in ramification, idle, and
undefined in every respect; it being, however, just possible still to
discern what the tree is meant for, and therefore, the type of the worst
modernism not being completely established.

Sec. 20. Fig. 4 establishes this type, being the ordinary condition of tree
treatment in our blotted water-color drawings; the nature of the tree
being entirely lost sight of, and no accurate knowledge, of any kind,
possessed or communicated.

Thus, from the extreme of definiteness and light, in the thirteenth
century (the middle of the Dark Ages!), we pass to the extreme of
uncertainty and darkness, in the middle of the nineteenth century.

As, however, the definite mediaeval work has some faults, so the
indefinite modern work has some virtues, its very uncertainty enabling
it to appeal pleasantly to the imagination (though in an inky manner, as
described above, Vol. III. Chap. x. Sec. 10), and sometimes securing
qualities of color which could no otherwise be obtained. It ought,
however, if we would determine its true standing, to be compared, not
with the somewhat forced and narrow decision of the thirteenth century,
but with the perfect and well-informed decision of Albert Durer and his
fellow-workmen. For the proper representation of these there was no room
in this plate; so, in Plate 25, above, on each sid