Speaking of a certain artist, _The New Path_ says: 'He follows nature as long as she is graceful and does not offend his eye, but once let her make what strikes him as a discord, and which is a discord, of course, for she, the great poet, makes no music without discords--and, straightway, Mr. ---- takes out the offending note, smooths it down, and thinks he has bettered nature's work.' Now, in music there are no _discords_; so soon as a discord is admitted, the sounds cease to be music;--there are _dissonances_, peculiar and unusual combinations of air vibrations, but these are never long dwelt on, and must always be resolved into the full and satisfactory harmony, of which the beauty is enhanced by the momentary lapse into strangeness. Dissonance is never the prevailing idea, and above all, never the final, closing one; it must always bear a certain relation to the key in which it is used, and the musical composition must be ended by the fullest and most satisfactory chord, or suggestion of a chord, found in that key. The majority of the Pre-Raphaelite school are willing to admit that 'there is but one Turner, and Ruskin is his prophet.' Let us then hear _one_ of the views which the eloquent oracle has advanced in connection with this subject. After advising the non-imaginative painter to remain in the region of the purely topographical or historical landscape, he continues; 'But, beyond this, let him note that though historical topography forbids _alteration_ (did Turner heed this precept?), it neither forbids sentiment nor choice. So far from doing this, the proper choice of subject is an absolute duty to the topographical painter: he should first take care that it is a subject intensely pleasing to himself, else he will never paint it well; and then also, that it shall be one in some sort pleasurable to the general public, else it is not worth painting at all; and lastly, take care that it be instructive, as well as pleasurable to the public, else it is not worth painting with care. I should particularly insist at present on this careful choice of subject, because the Pre-Raphaelites, taken as a body, have been culpably negligent in this respect, not in humble honor of Nature, but in morbid indulgence of their own impressions. They happen to find their fancies caught by a bit of an oak hedge, or the weeds at the sides of a duck pond, because, perhaps, they remind them of a stanza of Tennyson; and forthwith they sit down to sacrifice the most consummate skill, two or three months of the best summer time available for outdoor work (equivalent to some seventieth or sixtieth of all their lives), and nearly all their credit with the public, to this duck-pond delineation. Now it is indeed quite right that they should see much to be loved in the hedge, nor less in the ditch; but it is utterly and inexcusably wrong that they should neglect the nobler scenery, which is full of majestic interest, or enchanted by historical association; so that, as