carried the remainder of the interest thus becoming unobjectionable as an
element dividing the picture into equal parts.

The formula is always productive of excellent results. (See Howard's
"Sketcher's Manual.")

This proportional division of the picture one may find in the best of
Claude Lorraine's landscapes, with him a favorite method of construction.
It suggests the pillars and span for a suspension trestle. When, as is
invariably seen in Claude's works the nearest one is in shadow, the vision
is projected from this through the space intervening to the distant and
more attractive one. A feeling of great depth is inseparable from this
arrangement.

BALANCE BY OPPOSITION OF LINE.

A series of oppositional lines has more variety and is therefore more
picturesque than the tangent its equivalent. The simplest definition of
picturesqueness is variety in unity. The lines of the long road in
perspective offer easy conduct for the eye, but it finds a greater
interest in threading its way over a track lost, then found, lost and
found again. In time we as surely arrive from _a_ to _z_ by one route as
by the other, but in one the journey has had the greater interest.

Imagine a hillside and sky offered as a picture. The hillside is without
detail, the sky a blank. The first item introduced attracts the eye, the
second and third are joined with the first. If they parallel the line of
the hillside they do nothing toward the development of the picture but
rather harm by introducing an element of monotony. If, however, they are
so placed in sky and land as to accomplish opposition to this line they
help to send the eye on its travels.

No better example of this principle can be cited than Mr. Alfred
Steiglitz's pictorial photograph of two Dutch women on the shore. The
lines of ropes through the foreground connect with others in the middle
distance leading tangentially to the house beyond.

To one who fences or has used the broad sword a feeling for oppositional
line should come as second nature. A long sweeping stroke must be parried
or opposed frankly; the _riposte_ must also be parried. A bout is a
picturesque composition of two men and two minds in which unity of the
whole and of the parts is preserved by the balance of opposed measures.
The analogy is appropriate. The artist stands off brush in hand and fights
his subject to a finish, the force of one stroke neutralizing and parrying
another. This