It is not from the colouring only, but the general composition of landscapes, that the painter and landscape gardener will feel the difference in their respective arts; and although each may occasionally assist the other, yet I should no more advise the latter, in laying out the scenery of a place, to copy the confined field of vision, or affect the careless graces of Claude or Poussin, than I should recommend, as a subject proper for a landscape painter, the formal rows or quincunx position of trees in geometric gardening. It has been wittily observed, that the works of nature are well executed, but in a bad taste; this, I suppose, has arisen from the propensity of good taste, to display the works of nature to advantage; but it does not hence follow that art is to be the standard for nature's imitation; neither does it disgrace painting, to assert that nature may be rendered more pleasing than the finest picture; since the perfection of painting seldom aims at exact or individual representation of nature. A panorama gives a more natural idea of ships at sea than the best picture of Vandervelde; but it has little merit as a painting, because it too nearly resembles the original, to please as an effort of imitative art. My sketches, if they were more highly finished, would be a sort of panorama, or fac-simile, of the scenes they represent, in which little effect is attempted on the principle of composition in painting; but, like a profile shadow or sillouette, they may please as portraits, while they offend the connoisseur as paintings. The art I profess is of a higher nature than that of painting, and is thus very aptly described by a French author. '-il est, a la poesie et a la peinture, ce que la realite est a la description, et l'original a la copie.'
