The eye for natural scenery is never an absolute one, and if out of ten
generations each one finds the primitive canon of natural beauty in
something different, then none is entirely right and none entirely
wrong. This uncertainty of the eye for natural scenery might drive a
painter crazy if he should insist upon knowing definitely, once for all,
whether the succeeding century would not perhaps have just as good a
right to laugh at his ideal of the beautiful in nature as we have to
laugh at the preferences for natural scenery of the two preceding
generations. He might then, in consideration of the tremendous
fluctuations in the conception of the beautiful in nature, lose
confidence in his own eyes to such an extent that at last he would no
longer have any guarantee to assure him that the mountain which he is
drawing as a rounded knoll is not perhaps, in reality, pointed and
jagged, while the roundish outline merely holds his eyes captive, as it
did those of the painters of the pigtail.
If, however, the eye for natural scenery only sees _bona fide_, as the
jurists say, then it follows that it saw correctly for its age.
Whether our grandchildren will laugh at us because we saw thus and not
otherwise need not disturb our peace of mind, for no present has any
kind of guarantee that it will not be laughed at by the immediate
future.
* * * * *
THE MUSICAL EAR[15] (1852)
By W.
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