make the composition for ourselves. To some natural scenes, no skill
could impart interest of any kind; others attain to a certain
character of the picturesque; while others, again, combine in
themselves all the elements of a good picture. But even with these
last, mere imitation will not do. Nature, as Hazlitt observes, 'has a
larger canvas than man'--a canvas immensely larger; and the artist,
since he cannot copy, must select. The same reasoning applies to
figure and group-painting, and its accessories. Nature rarely forms a
perfect group, because it is not her purpose to embody a single
expression. As for small accessorial objects, such as a pin or a leaf,
being painted with the same care and accuracy as principal objects,
this is a defect in drawing, that argues a singular want of
reflection. In nature, we see distinctly the figure and its more
prominent parts, but we see the minute accessorial parts so
indistinctly, that sometimes we can scarcely tell what they are. The
precise detailing of these objects, therefore, may have the truth of
fact, but it is destitute of the truth of nature.

What would be the effect of the new system, if applied to romantic
fiction? But the question is unnecessary; for the new system ignores
romance, which is the truth of nature not of fact. A pre-Raphaelite
story, taken from real life, might be romantic in its incidents and
striking in its catastrophe; but it would want coherence in the
design, and therefore produce no sustained emotion; and its characters
being drawn, without selection, from vulgar prototypes, would excite
more disgust than interest. The drama?--but there the new theory of
art becomes too ridiculous: a tragedy on such a plan would be received
with alternate yawns of ennui and shouts of laughter. All these are
pertinent questions; for fine art, in literature, music, sculpture,
painting, architecture, forms a homogeneous circle under one law of