Hiroshige's great strength lay in his genius for strikingly effective composition, and in the skill with which he adapted his designs to the limitations of the colour-print technique. He reduced the pictured scene to a few simple elements of a highly decorative character, and managed to make them so symbolic and suggestive that we do not miss the multitude of details which he purposely omits. A strongly dominant unity of impression is the result. His finest designs convey a sense of personal feeling that even the Barbizon artists at their best do not surpass. With the limited resources of the wood block, he achieved subtle renderings of distance, aerial perspective, atmosphere, and light; and the poetic quality of his designs has endeared him to generations of print-lovers in a way more personal than is the case with any other artist. His work will stand beside the "Liber Studiorum" of Turner; it remains perhaps the most complete and magnificent landscape record that any land has ever had. One curious characteristic of these prints at once strikes the Western eye--the use of a band of dark colour along the top of the picture, which is shaded gradually down into the clear white of the lower sky. This convention serves several purposes. It provides a mass to balance the colour at the bottom of the design, bringing the whole sheet into the picture and not leaving the upper portion as a mere margin above the landscape proper. It also creates depth and atmosphere, setting the brightest part of the design, the middle, back into the frame created by the upper and lower masses. And finally, it renders with peculiar accuracy the effect of gradual vanishing which we actually experience as we look at a landscape: in our visual field, the sky does not end in a sharp line, but blurs and darkens at the upper edge of the space that our eyes survey. Hiroshige's bird and flower designs are works of extraordinary freshness and loveliness; a unique and idyllic charm emanates from them, and as compositions they take high rank (Plate 56). Alilt against the emerald sky, A tiny violet songster swings, Clutching a branch, in ecstasy Of light and height and skiey things. Singing, he swings; and swinging, I For once am showered with joy of wings. Keen and pure, of a magic power, Thy rapture stirs what was never stirred. Thou hast brought to earth a cloudland dower, The joy of the small sweet singing bird. All time is richer for thy hour Of delicate music, gravely heard. Does the iris droop beneath the heat? Its weariness finds voice in thee. Does the pheasant run with snow-clogged feet? Winter is theirs who thy vision see. Is summer's glow to the swallow sweet? Thou hast captured its summer eternally.