charmed eye glides into the scene: a soft, undulating light leads it
on, from bank to bank, from shrub to shrub; now leaping and sparkling
over pebbly brooks and sunny sands; now fainter and fainter, dying
away down shady slopes, then seemingly quenched in some secluded dell;
yet only for a moment,--for a dimmer ray again carries it onward,
gently winding among the boles of trees and rambling vines, that,
skirting the ascent, seem to hem in the twilight; then emerging
into day, it flashes in sheets over towers and towns, and woods and
streams, when it finally dips into an ocean, so far off, so twin-like
with the sky, that the doubtful horizon, unmarked by a line, leaves no
point of rest: and now, as in a flickering arch, the fascinated eye
seems to sail upward like a bird, wheeling its flight through a
mottled labyrinth of clouds, on to the zenith; whence, gently
inflected by some shadowy mass, it slants again downward to a mass
still deeper, and still to another, and another, until it falls into
the darkness of some massive tree,--focused like midnight in the
brightest noon: there stops the eye, instinctively closing, and giving
place to the Soul, there to repose and to dream her dreams of romance
and love.

From these two examples of their general effect, some notion may be
gathered of the different systems of the two Artists; and though
no mention has been made of the particular lines employed, their
distinctive character may readily be inferred from the kind of motion
given to the eye in the descriptions we have attempted. In the
rapid, abrupt, contrasted, whirling movement in the one, we have an
exposition of an irregular combination of curves and angles; while the
simple combination of the parabola and the serpentine will account for
all the imperceptible transitions in the other.