The elements of the landscape
were treated with knowledge and power, but not often with feeling, and
very seldom with a recognition of its central significance. One example
is so marvellous, however, that we cannot forbear referring to it. Its
truthfulness is the more remarkable from the fact that the painter's
conceptions rarely were such that any true landscape could be found
capable of harmony with their character. In this picture, "The
Temptation of Saint Anthony," one of the Pitti Palace Gallery, Salvator
has wrought marvellously like a demon. The horizon and the sky near it
are charged with a sense of demoniacal conflict for human souls, and
forebodings of defeat and woe.

Yet within this, mantling the remotest depths, there is a sheen of
light, a gleam of hope and faith.

In our own times there is little to refer to illustrative of excellence
in this branch of Art. Overbeck makes frequent use of natural scenery,
and his delicate yet firm outlines repeat, hill and valley and clouds,
the sentiment of peace and purity which pervades his noble productions.

Not that there are not produced frequently, and especially in France,
works remarkable for truth and power. But, too often, the truths are
redundant, and the power vanquishes the sentiments of the group.

One artist in France, Rosa Bonheur, has, however, embodied conceptions
so noble, so in unison with the finest Nature, that its most glorious
and most significant scenery, rendered with a handling akin to the old
mastership, is alone adequate to sympathize with and sustain them. I
need but refer to the wonderful view of the Pyrenees in the picture of
"The Muleteers," the tender morning spirit of that heathery scene in the
Highlands, and that miracle of representation, the near ground, crisp
and frosty, of Mr. Belmont's "Hunters in Early Morning."

American Art, as represented in Italy, has few examples of excellence in
this branch of painting. Its followers have wrought more persistently
in other directions, toward the expression of a class of ideals rarely
involving the one which we have attempted to analyze. Yet, occasionally,
an artist has appeared, making Rome or Florence his home long enough to
win a place, which, when he has departed, is not quickly filled, who has
ideas of history and events calling for the record of the palette;
or there has been wrought in the studio of some resident painter a
composition in which landscape has been employed as acces