not find matter of offence, in
what is technically termed the composition of a natural landscape.
And yet how unintelligible is this! In all other matters we are justly
instructed to regard Nature as supreme. With her details we shrink from
competition. Who shall presume to imitate the colors of the tulip, or to
improve the proportions of the lily of the valley? The criticism which
says, of sculpture or of portraiture, that "Nature is to be exalted
rather than imitated," is in error. No pictorial or sculptural
combinations of points of human loveliness, do more than approach the
living and breathing human beauty as it gladdens our daily path. Byron,
who often erred, erred not in saying, I've seen more living beauty, ripe
and real, than all the nonsense of their stone ideal. In landscape alone
is the principle of the critic true; and, having felt its truth here,
it is but the headlong spirit of generalization which has induced him to
pronounce it true throughout all the domains of Art. Having, I say,
felt its truth here. For the feeling is no affectation or chimera. The
mathematics afford no more absolute demonstrations, than the sentiment
of his Art yields to the artist. He not only believes, but positively
knows, that such and such apparently arbitrary arrangements of matter,
or form, constitute, and alone constitute, the true Beauty. Yet his
reasons have not yet been matured into expression. It remains for a more
profound analysis than the world has yet seen, fully to investigate and
express them. Nevertheless is he confirmed in his instinctive opinions,
by the concurrence of all his compeers. Let a composition be defective,
let an emendation be wrought in its mere arrangement of form; let this
emendation be submitted to every artist in the world; by each will its
necessity be admitted. And even far more than this, in remedy of the
defective composition, each insulated member of the fraternity will
suggest the identical emendation.

I repeat that in landscape arrangements, or collocations alone, is the
physical Nature susceptible of "exaltation" and that, therefore, her
susceptibility of improvement at this one point, was a mystery which,
hitherto I had been unable to solve. It was Mr. Ellison who first
suggested the idea that what we regarded as improvement or exaltation
of the natural beauty, was really such, as respected only the mortal
or human point of view; that each alteration or disturbance of the
primitive s