historical interest, or of natural beauty existent at the period_;
representation such as might at once aid the advance 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.

178. 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 battlefield, 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 har