Ultimate success, by the way, often depends less on knowing what to take and how to take it than on a well-trained judgment which knows what is good or bad when we have taken it.
Whilst the mere lines or forms of objects may impart some amount of feeling and sentiment to a scene, inasmuch as there is restfulness and repose in the long horizontal lines of the river-side pastures, something rhythmical in the sinuous curves of the winding stream, or vigour and variety in the irregular forms of the rugged cliffs and so on, yet the ideas and feelings which the picture will promote depend more on the lights and shades, and the masses contrasting or merging each with each.
But Nature does not always present herself in pleasingly arranged masses, and is consequently at such times commonplace and unpicturesque in the literal sense of the word. At such times she will not attract the pictorial worker any more than she will when perchance the lines and groupings are unsuitable.
The landscape which basks under the full blaze of sun, glittering throughout every inch with a myriad twinkling lights and sharp details, awakens no feeling akin to those which probably everyone feels when in the twilight of evening plane after plane recedes as one broad flat tint behind the other. Under the bright light of day we may wonder at the richness and plenty upon the earth, we may rejoice in that there are so many curious and pretty things to look at, but these are like the feelings inspired by reading a book on natural history, rather than the emotions created by the perusal of a poem, or listening to sweet music.
Compare for a moment the two photographs, fig. 19 and fig. 20.
Fig. 19.
The first is by no means an extreme case of the ordinary photograph, and notice that although the composition is fairly good as far as grouping goes, there is an absence of any quality which might make one feel anything outside the bare recognition of the facts depicted, but the second, if it be good at all, must depend for admiration on a certain amount of sentiment which it suggests or creates. You will notice that in the first there is no sense of distance, and although a church tower, behind the masts of the boats, is half a mile or so away it does not possess the "tone" and veiling of atmosphere which would make it appear distant. Every part of the view seems equally near, or nearly so; the eye wanders over the whole, alighting on details here and there which interest and amuse, yet there is an absence of just that breadth which is noticeably present in the second example.