s such
reiteration to move us?

The wholeness which the imagination demands is not quantitative, but
qualitative; it has nothing to do with size or with number, except so
far as, by confusing the sense, they obscurely intimate infinity, with
which all quantities are incommensurable. Mr. Ruskin's encyclopedic
anatomizing of the landscape, to the end of showing the closeness of
Turner's perception, has great interest, but not the interest merely of
a longer list, for it is to be remembered that the longest list would be
no nearer to an exhaustive analysis than the shortest. It is not a
specious completeness, but a sense of infinity that can never be
completed,--greater intensity, not greater extension,--that
distinguishes modern landscape-art. Hence there is no incongruity in the
seeming license that it takes with the firm order of Nature. It is in no
spirit of levity or profanity that the substantial distinctions of
things are thus disregarded,--that all absolute rank is denied, and the
value of each made contingent and floating. It is only that the mind is
somewhat nearer apprehending the sense, and dwells less on the
characters.

If Art suffers in its relative rank among human interests by this
democratic levelling, it is to the gain of what Art intends. It is true,
no picture can henceforth move us as men were once moved by pictures. No
Borgo Allegro will ever turn out again in triumph for a Madonna of
Cimabue or of any one else; whatever feeling Turner or another may
excite comes far short of that. But the splendor that clothed the poor,
pale, formal image belonged very little to it, but expressed rather the
previous need of utterance, and could reach that pitch only when the age
had not yet learned to think and to write, but must put up with these
hieroglyphics. Art has no more grown un-religious than Religion has, but
only less idolatrous. As fast as religion passes into life,--as the
spiritual nature of man begins to be recognized as the ground of
legislation and society, and not merely in the miracle of
sainthood,--the apparatus and imagery of the Church, its dogmas and
ceremonies, grow superfluous, as what they stand for is itself present.
It is the dawn that makes these stars grow pale. So in Art, as fast as
the dream of the imagination becomes the common sense of mankind, and
only so fast, the awe that surrounded the earlier glimpses is lost. Its
influence is not lessened, but diffused and domesticated as Cu