ctly speaking, lies all the _beauty_ of it. The photograph has
or may have a certain value of this kind, but a little time is needful
before we discriminate what is general and what is special. Its
extraneous interest, as specimen, as _instance_ only, tends at once to
abate from the first view, as the mind classifies and disposes of it.
What remains, not thus to be disposed of, is its value as picture. Under
this test, the photograph, compared with works of Art of a high order,
will prove wanting in substance, thin and spotty, faulty in both ways,
too full and too empty. For the result in each case must be
proportionate to the impression that it echoes; but this, in the work of
the artist, is reinforced by all his previous study and experience, as
well as by the force and delicacy which his perception has over that of
other men. It is thus really more concrete, has more in it, than the
actual scene.

But when Composition is decried as _artificial_, what is meant is that
it is _artifice_. It must be artificial, in the sense that all is there
for the sake of the picture. But it is not to be the _contrivance_ of
the painter; the purpose must be in the work, not in his head. Diotima,
in Plato's "Banquet," tells Socrates that Eros desires not the
beautiful, but to bring forth in the beautiful; the creative impulse
itself must be the motive, not anything ulterior. We require of the
artist that he shall build better than he knows,--that his work shall
not be the statement of his opinions, however correct or respectable,
but an infinity, inexhaustible like Nature. He is to paint, as Turner
said, only his impressions, and this precisely because they are not
_his_, but stand outside of his will. To further this, to get the direct
action of the artist's instinct, clear of the meddling and patching of
forethought and afterthought, is no doubt the aim of the seemingly
careless, formless handling now in vogue,--the dash which Harding says
makes all the difference between what is good and what is intolerable in
water-colors,--and the palette-knife-and-finger procedure of the French
painters.

The sin of premeditated composition is that it is premeditated; the why
and wherefore is of less consequence. If the motive be extraneous to the
work, a theory, not an instinct, it does not matter much how _high_ it
is. It is fatal to beauty to see in the thing only its uses,--in the
tree only the planks, in Niagara only the water-power; but a r