[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.")
have read with much pleasure your critic's able and interesting article on " The Human Element in Landscape Painting." Will you allow me space to explain why it is that, while agreeing with the greater portion of what he says on the subject, I think that he errs in supposing that " a few stone-pines in the foreground, a wreath of cloud filling the valley, a blue mountain beyond, and above all the snowy crest of an Alp, golden in the sunset or grey in the dawn," will not of themselves supply us with the elements of a picture which shall abundantly satisfy all the conditions of excellence ? " If," says the writer, " we are to be raised to any noble emotion by a painting, it must be by an appeal to what is noblest in us." I do not think that the superlative is necessary, but at any rate, there are some who are of opinion that not the least noble emotions of which they are capable are stirred within them when in the silence of some mountain solitude they,—
"Hold Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unrolled." In such a picture, then, the human element is supplied by the be- holder himself. As he looks upon it, he finds himself trans- ported amid a rush of old memories and old associations, all clothed in the golden hue of imagination, to those stupendous Alpine fastnesses where in some by-gone days he " Worshipped the Invisible alone."
Introduce a human figure here, and the whole charm is destroyed. With the writer's analysis of such pictures as the 4 6Tdmeraire " and " Abandoned " I fully agree, but there are pictures and pictures, and nota few of us find that we derive most teal pleasure from those which we can use as windows whereby to escape alone for a few moments from this life of " common work-a-day humanity (to use your critic's own expression), whether it be to moor or mountain, to the breezy hill-side, or to " the silence that is in the pathless woods," 1 Where tides of grass break into foam of flowers,
Or whore the wind's foot shine along the sea."
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