ce of the sciences, and keep faithful
record of every monument of past ages which was likely to be swept away
in the approaching eras of revolutionary change.

The instinct came, as I said, exactly at the right moment; and let the
reader consider what amount and kind of general knowledge might by this
time have been possessed by the nations of Europe, had their painters
understood and obeyed it. Suppose that, after disciplining themselves so
as to be able to draw, with unerring precision, each the particular kind
of subject in which he most delighted, they had separated into two great
armies of historians and naturalists;--that the first had painted with
absolute faithfulness every edifice, every city, every battle-field,
every scene of the slightest historical interest, precisely and
completely rendering their aspect at the time; and that their
companions, according to their several powers, had painted with like
fidelity the plants and animals, the natural scenery, and the
atmospheric phenomena of every country on the earth--suppose that a
faithful and complete record were now in our museums of every building
destroyed by war, or time, or innovation, during these last 200
years--suppose that each recess of every mountain chain of Europe had
been penetrated, and its rocks drawn with such accuracy that the
geologist's diagram was no longer necessary--suppose that every tree of
the forest had been drawn in its noblest aspect, every beast of the
field in its savage life--that all these gatherings were already in our
national galleries, and that the painters of the present day were
laboring, happily and earnestly, to multiply them, and put such means of
knowledge more and more within reach of the common people--would not
that be a more honorable life for them, than gaining precarious bread by
"bright effects?" They think not, perhaps. They think it easy, and
therefore contemptible, to be truthful; they have been taught so all
their lives. But it is not so, whoever taught it them. It is most
difficult, and worthy of the greatest men's greatest effort, to render,
as it should be rendered, the simplest of the natural features of the
earth; but also be it remembered, no man is confined to the simplest;
each may look out work for himself where he chooses, and it will be
strange if he cannot find something hard enough for him. The excuse is,
however, one of the lips only; for every painter knows that when he
draws back from the a