eir
exemplars, but from a dread lest it should seem that what is shown is
all that is meant. The early painters were thus _naive_ and distinct
because of their limitations; they knew very well what they meant,--as,
that the event took place out-of-doors, with the sun shining, the grass
under-foot, an oak-tree here, a strawberry-vine there,--mere adjunct and
by-play, not to be questioned as to the import of the piece: _that_ the
Church took care of. But who can say what a modern landscape means? The
significance that in the older picture was as it were outside of it,
presupposed, assured elsewhere, has now to be incorporated, verily
present in every atom of soil and film of vapor. The realism of the
modern picture must be infinitely more extended, for the meaning of it
is that _nothing_ is superfluous or insignificant. But with the reality
that it lends to every particle of matter, it must introduce, at the
same time, the protest that spirit makes against matter,--most distinct,
indeed, in the human form and countenance, but nowhere absent. In its
utmost explication there must be felt that there is yet more behind; its
utmost distinctness must be everywhere indefinable, evanescent,--must
proclaim that this parade of surface-appearance is not there for its own
sake. This is what Mr. Ruskin calls "the pathetic fallacy": but there is
nothing fallacious in it; it is solid truth, only under the guise of
mystery. Turner said that Mr. Ruskin had put all sorts of meanings into
his pictures that he knew nothing about. Of course, else they would
never have got into the pictures. But this does not affect their
validity, but means only that it is the imagination, not the intellect,
that must apprehend them.

It is not an outward, arbitrary incompleteness that is demanded, but a
visible dependence of each part, by its partiality declaring the
completeness of the whole. It is often said that the picture must "leave
room for the imagination." Yes, and for nothing else; but this does not
imply that it should be unfinished, but that, when the painter has set
down what the imagination grasped in one view, he shall stop, no matter
where, and not attempt to eke out the deficiency by formula or by knack
of fingers. Wherever the inspiration leaves him, there is an end of the
picture. Beyond that we get only his personalities; no skill, no
earnestness of intention, etc., can avail him; he is only mystifying
himself or us. At these points we so