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matured into expression. It remains for a more profound analysis
than the world has yet seen, fully to investigate and express them.
Nevertheless he is confirmed in his instinctive opinions by the voice of
all his brethren. Let a "composition" be defective; let an emendation
be wrought in its mere arrangement of form; let this emendation be
submitted to every artist in the world; by each will its necessity
be admitted. And even far more than this:--in remedy of the defective
composition, each insulated member of the fraternity would have
suggested the identical emendation.
I repeat that in landscape arrangements alone is the physical nature
susceptible of exaltation, and that, therefore, her susceptibility of
improvement at this one point, was a mystery I had been unable to solve.
My own thoughts on the subject had rested in the idea that the primitive
intention of nature would have so arranged the earth's surface as to
have fulfilled at all points man's sense of perfection in the beautiful,
the sublime, or the picturesque; but that this primitive intention had
been frustrated by the known geological disturbances--disturbances of
form and color--grouping, in the correction or allaying of which lies
the soul of art. The force of this idea was much weakened, however, by
the necessity which it involved of considering the disturbances abnormal
and unadapted to any purpose. It was Ellison who suggested that
they were prognostic of death. He thus explained:--Admit the earthly
immortality of man to have been the first intention. We have then the
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