With respect to the imitations of the landscape-painter, the notion of a deception cannot occur. His trees and rivers cannot be mistaken, for an instant, for real trees and rivers, and certainly not while they stand there in the gilt frame, and the gilt frame itself against the papered wall. His only chance of deception is to get rid of the frame, convert his picture into a transparency, and place it in the space which a window should occupy. In almost all cases, deception is obtained, not by painting well, but by those artifices which disguise that what we see _is_ a painting. At the same time, we are not satisfied with an expression which several writers, we remark, have lately used, and which Mr Ruskin very explicitly adopts. The imitations of the landscape-painter are not a "language" which he uses; they are not mere "signs," analogous to those which the poet or the orator employs. There is no analogy between them. Let us analyse our impressions as we stand before the artist's landscape, not thinking of the artist, or his dexterity, but simply absorbed in the pleasure which he procures us--we do not find ourselves reverting, in imagination, to _other_ trees or other rivers than those he has depicted. We certainly do not believe them to be real trees, but neither are they mere signs, or a language to recall such objects; but _what there is of tree there_ we enjoy. There is the coolness and the quiet of the shaded avenue, and we feel them; there is the sunlight on that bank, and we feel its cheerfulness; we feel the serenity of his river. He has brought the spirit of the trees around us; the imagination rests in the picture. In other departments of art the effect is the same. If we stand before a head of Rembrandt or Vandyke, we do not think that it lives; but neither do we think of some other head, of which that is the type. But there is majesty, there is thought, there is calm repose, there is some phase of humanity expressed before us, and we are occupied with so much of human life, or human character, as is then and there given us. Imitate as many qualities of the real object as you please, but always the highest, never sacrificing a truth of the mind, or the heart, for one only of the sense. Truth, as Mr Ruskin most justly says--truth always. When it is said that truth should not be always expressed, the maxim, if properly understood, resolves into this--that the higher truth is not to be sacrificed to the lower. In a landscape, the gradation of light and shade is a more important truth than the exact brilliancy (supposing it to be attainable,) of any individual object. The painter must calculate what means he has at his disposal for representing this gradation of light, and he must pitch his tone accordingly. Say he pitches it far below reality, he is still in search of truth--of contrast and degree.