Thus were the French gardens delivered by the English. Just as figure painting renounced lofty, architectural, formal composition, so those bisected and upholstered gardens were supplanted by irregular and, as it were, accidental bits of nature. People took no more trouble, in Rousseau's phrase, "to dishonour nature by seeking to beautify her," but laid out gardens in harmony with Goethe's remark in _Werther_: "A feeling heart, not a scientific art of gardening, suggested the plan." Close to Versailles, near the box-tree patterns of Lenôtre, lay the Petit Trianon, with its pond, its brook, and its dairy, where the unfortunate Marie Antoinette used to dream. And if painting still loitered on its preliminary return to nature, that only implied that the great artists--they only came in 1830!--were not yet born. Great artists can only raise themselves on the shoulders of their predecessors, whose value lies in their utility. The French landscapes of the eighteenth century, seen in the light of historical development, are of no importance; but, nevertheless, they gave a considerable stimulus in that they sought to animate the style of Poussin with a closer perception of nature. Hubert Robert is certainly strongly decorative, but he has a light touch; one cannot take him at his word, but he is intelligent, and has sometimes grey and green tones that are soft and beautiful. Joseph Vernet painted coast scenery, views of harbours, storms at sea, likewise with decorative, superficial effects of light; he let flashes of lightning streak black clouds, sun-rays dance over lightly ruffled waves, silver moonshine play mysteriously upon the water, and caused conflagrations to break out and red flames to shoot up to heaven. He is somewhat inane and motley in his colouring. But he had ceased to see in the parts of nature nothing but materials for the construction of nicely fitting scenery. He no longer attempted to speak to the reason by means of lines, but to touch the soul through humour, and he employed in his scenery not only buildings and ruins, gods and ancient shepherds, but also modern groups of every kind. In Switzerland, the charming etchings and water-colours of _Solomon Gessner_ must be especially mentioned. Ludwig Richter, indeed, pointed them out as the eighteenth century works which, after the engravings of Chodowiecki, he loved the best. Gessner venerated Claude, and had an enthusiasm for Poussin, but his pictures have no traces of the lofty style of the heroic school of landscape. He sketched his native meadows, trees, and brooks; he loved all that was small and secluded and cosy, arbours and hedges, quiet little gardens and idyllic nooks. He approached everything with a very childlike and faithful observation of nature. A second Swiss, Ludwig Hess, dedicated a similar subtile sense of nature and loving zeal as much to his native Switzerland as to the Roman Campagna. [Illustration: GESSNER. LANDSCAPE (ETCHING).] [Illustration: _L'Art._