“All that relates to the expression of the passions and the beauty of the human form has perhaps attained its fullest development in the temperate northern zone under the skies of Greece and Italy. The artist, drawing from the depths of imagination, no less than from the contemplation of beings of his own species, derives the types of historical painting alike from unfettered creation and from truthful imitation. Landscape painting, though scarcely a more imitative art, has a more material basis, and a more earthly tendency. It requires for its development a greater amount of various and distinct impressions, which, when imbibed from external contemplation, must be fertilized by the powers of the mind in order to be presented to the senses of others as a creative work of art. The grander style of heroic landscape-painting is the combined result of a profound appreciation of nature, and of this inward process of the mind.
“Everywhere, in every separate portion of the earth, nature is indeed only a reflex of the whole. The forms of organization recur again and again in different combinations. Even the icy north is cheered for months together by the presence of herbs and large Alpine blossoms covering the earth, and by a mild azure sky. Hitherto landscape painting among us has pursued her graceful labours familiar only with the simpler forms of our native floras, but not therefore without depth of feeling and richness of creative fancy. Dwelling only on the native and indigenous form of our vegetation, this branch of art, notwithstanding that it has been circumscribed by such narrow limits, has yet afforded sufficient scope for highly-gifted painters, such as the Caracci, Gaspar Poussin, Claude Lorraine, and Ruysdael, to produce the happiest and most varied creations of art, by their magical power of managing the grouping of trees, and the effects of light and shade. That progress which may still be expected in art, from a more animated intercourse with the tropical world, and from ideas engendered in the mind of the artist by the contemplation of Nature in her grandest forms, will never diminish the fame of the old masters. I have alluded to this, to recal the ancient bond which unites a knowledge of Nature with poetry and a taste for art. For in landscape painting, as in every other branch of art, a distinction must be drawn between the elements generated by a limited field of contemplation and direct observation, and those which spring from the boundless depth of feeling, and from the force of idealising mental power. The grand conceptions which landscape painting, as a more or less inspired branch of the poetry of nature, owes to the creative power of the mind, are, like man himself, and the imaginative faculties with which he is endowed, independent of place. These remarks especially refer to the gradations in the form of trees from Ruysdael and Everdingen, through the works of Claude Lorraine, to Poussin and Annibal Caracci. In the great masters of art there is no indication of local limitation. But an extension of the visible horizon, and an acquaintance with the nobler and grander forms of nature, and with the luxuriant fulness of life in tropical regions, afford the advantage of not simply enriching the material groundwork of landscape-painting, but also of inducing more vivid impressions in the minds of less highly gifted painters, and thus heightening their powers of artistic creation.”
[105]. p. 230—“From the thick and rough bark of the Crescentiæ and Gustaviæ.”
In Crescentia Cujete (the Tutuma tree, whose large fruit-shells are so indispensable to the natives as household utensils), in Cynometra, the Cacao-tree (Theobroma), and the Perigara Gustavia (Linn.), the tender blossoms burst forth from the half-carbonized bark. When children eat the fruit of the Pirigara speciosa (the Chupo), their whole bodies become tinged with yellow; and this jaundice, after a continuance of from twenty-four to thirty-six hours, disappears without the use of medicine.
An indelible impression was produced on my mind by the luxuriant power of vegetation in the tropical world, when, on entering a Cacao plantation (Caca hual), in the Valles de Aragua, after a damp night, I saw for the first time large blossoms springing from the root of a Theobroma, deeply imbedded in the black soil. This is one of the most instantaneous manifestations of the activity of the vegetative force of organisation. Northern nations speak of “the awakening of Nature at the first genial breath of Spring;”—expressions that strongly contrast with the imaginative complaint of the Stagirite, who regarded vegetable forms as buried in a “still sleep, from which there is no awakening, and free from the desires that excite to spontaneous motion.”[[RB]]
[106]. p. 230—“Draw on their heads as caps.”
These are the flowers of our Aristolochia cordata, to which reference has been made in Illustration 25. The largest flowers in the world, besides those belonging to the Compositæ (the Mexican Helianthus annuus), are produced by Rafflesia Arnoldi, Aristolochia, Datura, Barringtonia, Gustavia, Carolinea, Lecythis, Nymphæa, Nelumbium, Victoria Regina, Magnolia, Cactus, the Orchideæ, and the Liliaceous forms.
[107]. p. 231—“The luminous worlds which spangle the firmament from pole to pole.”
The more magnificent portion of the southern sky, in which shine the constellations of the Centaur, Argo, and the Southern Cross, where the Magellanic clouds shed their pale light, is for ever concealed from the eyes of the inhabitants of Europe. It is only under the equator that man enjoys the glorious spectacle of all the stars of the southern and northern heavens revealed at one glance. Some of our northern constellations,—as, for instance, Ursus Major and Ursus Minor,—owing to their low position when seen from the region of the equator, appear to be of a remarkable, almost fearful magnitude. As the inhabitant of the tropics beholds all stars, so too, in regions where plains, deep valleys, and lofty mountains are alternated, does Nature surround him with representatives of every form of vegetation.