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yness of the unmade hay in furrows or tufts with lovely violet shadows, and long shades of the trees thrown athwart all, and melting away one tint into another imperceptibly; and one moment more a cloud passes and all the magic is gone. Begin to-morrow morning, all is changed: the hay and the reapers are gone most likely; the sun too, or if not, it is in quite the opposite quarter, and all that _was_ loveliest is all that is tamest now, alas! It is better to be a poet; still better a mere lover of Nature; one who never dreams of possession.... _Ford Madox Brown._ CXCV You should choose an old tumbledown wall and throw over it a piece of white silk. Then morning and evening you should gaze at it, until at length you can see the ruin through the silk--its prominences, its levels, its zigzags, and its cleavages, storing them up in the mind and fixing them in the eye. Make the prominences your mountains, the lower parts your water, the hollows your ravines, the cracks your streams, the lighter parts your nearer points, the darker parts your more distant points. Get all these thoroughly into you, and soon you will see men, birds, plants, and trees, flying and moving among them. You may then ply your brush according to your fancy, and the result will be of heaven, not of men. _Sung Ti_ (Chinese, eleventh century). CXCVI By looking attentively at old and smeared walls, or stones and veined marble of various colours, you may fancy that you see in them several compositions--landscapes, battles, figures in quick motion, strange countenances, and dresses, with an infinity of other objects. By these confused lines the inventive genius is excited to new exertions. _Leonardo._ CXCVII Out by a quarter to eight to examine the river Brent at Hendon; a mere brooklet, running in most dainty sinuosity under overshadowing oaks and all manner of leafiness. Many beauties, and hard to choose amongst, for I had determined to make a little picture of it. However, Nature, that at first sight appears so lovely, is on consideration almost always incomplete; moreover, there is no painting intertangled foliage without losing half its beauties. If imitated exactly it can only be done as seen from one eye, and quite flat and confused therefore. _Ford Madox Brown._ CXCVIII To gaze upon the clouds of autumn, a soaring exaltation in the soul; to feel the spring breeze stirring wild exultant thoughts;--what is there in
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