A little study of one who is the glory of this Gallery, viz. Constable, will illustrate this better. A landscape painter may copy carefully and minutely a spreading cornfield, with reapers at work and effects of sunlight, but, as was said in the case of Corot, there is a mystery in landscape which only genius can discover. This is not to be interpreted as Corot found it was, by wholesale sacrifice of details, but by studying the art of making these contribute to the general effect. The really great painter seems to work in this way: he sees or discovers an “effect”; it becomes an inspiration, it takes possession of him, and it imprints itself vividly on his pictorial memory. He notes the same effect under other conditions, and so the idea becomes generalized. Thus a great marine painter, on an occasion, watches the form of waves in a storm, or a peculiar effect of light. As to mere mechanical painting, that becomes, or should become, as the language he speaks; neither does he require the object or model to be before him to paint from, save by way of suggestion or correction. It is to be suspected that the average modern painter does not work on these principles. He _copies_ everything from without, and not from within. The great painter who has found inspiration in his landscape will only copy so far as to ensure topographical correctness, but his main purpose is to produce the general effect or inspiration which is imprinted on his memory. Such is the meaning of the impression left by Constable’s work. The trees, pastures, figures, are all subsidiary to the _tone_ of the whole, the grand feeling of open air which spreads beyond the narrow, contracted limits of the frame. As _he_ felt the largeness, so is the sense of largeness produced in the spectator. One well-known picture will illustrate this more effectively. Like the human face, the cathedral has its cast of expression, a kind of soft tenderness, or placid, quiet solitariness, wholly different from the air of perky sharpness and strutting detail which photographs present. Turning to the “Salisbury Cathedral” of this painter anyone that has seen the original will recognize how he caught the poetry, the contrast of the grey building with the green sward of the close, and the deep tone of the trees, and the beautiful significance of the spire, which seems almost to be a natural product of the landscape. These spires, indeed, always seem to give a different sort of interpretation to the place in which they stand; and every person of sensibility will own to different impressions as he passes on the railway by Canterbury, Peterborough, or Ely. In the case of the Salisbury spire there is a certain sharpness which contrasts with the dark and angry cloud behind, and gives an air of menace and hostility.