desire to render
some part of what they saw in nature faithfully; and, otherwise, trained
in convictions such as I have above endeavored to induce. But one of
them is quiet in temperament, has a feeble memory, no invention, and
excessively keen sight. The other is impatient in temperament, has a
memory which nothing escapes, an invention which never rests, and is
comparatively near-sighted.

187. Set them both free in the same field in a mountain valley. One sees
everything, small and large, with almost the same clearness; mountains
and grasshoppers alike; the leaves on the branches, the veins in the
pebbles, the bubbles in the stream; but he can remember nothing, and
invent nothing. Patiently he sets himself to his mighty task; abandoning
at once all thoughts of seizing transient effects, or giving general
impressions of that which his eyes present to him in microscopical
dissection, he chooses some small portion out of the infinite scene, and
calculates with courage the number of weeks which must elapse before he
can do justice to the intensity of his perceptions, or the fullness of
matter in his subject.

188. Meantime, the other has been watching the change of the clouds, and
the march of the light along the mountain sides; he beholds the entire
scene in broad, soft masses of true gradation, and the very feebleness
of his sight is in some sort an advantage to him, in making him more
sensible of the aerial mystery of distance, and hiding from him the
multitudes of circumstances which it would have been impossible for him
to represent. But there is not one change in the casting of the jagged
shadows along the hollows of the hills, but it is fixed on his mind
forever; not a flake of spray has broken from the sea of cloud about
their bases, but he has watched it as it melts away, and could recall it
to its lost place in heaven by the slightest effort of his thoughts. Not
only so, but thousands and thousands of such images, of older scenes,
remain congregated in his mind, each mingling in new associations with
those now visibly passing before him, and these again confused with
other images of his own ceaseless, sleepless imagination, flashing by in
sudden troops. Fancy how his paper will be covered with stray symbols
and blots, and undecipherable shorthand:--as for his sitting down to
"draw from Nature," there was not one of the things which he wished to
represent, that stayed for so much as five seconds together: but n