cience and law
lay down the same rules for both,--save for the differing modes of
execution.

It is another matter when it is a question of representing nature as a
whole, and under less limited forms: seas, mountains, the atmosphere and
broad plains--landscapes of vast extent,--subjects forbidden to
sculpture even more exclusively than simple compositions of several
figures, which are seldom successful in sculpture. For if sculpture
sometimes makes a group, if it is used to decorate monuments and tombs,
it offers nothing analogous to those magnificent phases of nature which
we find on the canvases of the great masters.

Delsarte, who from the laws of mimetics deduced for painters means of
expressing correctly every impression and emotion which man can feel,
taught nothing in regard to this special field of the landscape artist,
who is not subject to the conditions of the actor, sculptor or orator.
But, if this aspect of art--save in cases where figures are
introduced--does not come under the head of certain statements of our
science, not having to imitate attitude, gesture or voice--in a word,
anything proceeding from the human organism,--it is, perhaps more
closely than elsewhere, allied to the innovator's law: to that law which
prompts the artist to respond to the psychical aspirations of his
fellowmen, and demands that in satisfying the senses, he should also
arouse or inspire the thought and feeling of beauty.

Thus the painter of nature, as much of a reality as man, but a reality
in its own way, if he desires to make nature understood and loved, must
give it the stamp of his own ideas, his own feelings, his own
impressions.

Why should I care to be shown trees and waters, valleys and mountains,
if the tree does not tell me of the coolness of its shade, if the water
does not reveal the peace of the deep lake, if I cannot divine the
rippling of the brook, if the valley does not make me long to plunge
into its depths! Why recall to me the mountain, if its curves do not
rouse in my mind any ideas of grace, elegance and majesty,--if its peaks
do not make me dream of the Infinite!

However skilful the artist may be in the reproduction of form and the
handling of color, he will always be far inferior to nature if his soul
has never heard the inner murmur of all those mysteries of the
sensitive, and I will venture to say, spiritual life, contained in
forests, waterfalls and ravines. Lacking this initiation, he will