From the observations made in the preceding Chapter on photographic and stereoscopic portraiture, the reader must have already drawn the inference that the same landscape or building, seen at different distances, varies essentially in its character,—beauties disclosing themselves and defects disappearing as we approach or recede from them. The picture in the camera, therefore, as used by Mr. Thomson, or, what is still better, with the exception of colour, the photograph obtained by the same instrument, will supply the artist with all the general materials for his picture. The photograph will differ considerably from any sketch which the artist may have himself made, owing to certain optical illusions to which his eye is subject. The hills and other vertical lines in the distance will be lower in the photograph than in his sketch.[59] The vertical lines of buildings will converge upwards in the photograph, as they ought to do, in receding from the eye; and in the same picture there will be a confusion, as we shall afterwards shew, in the delineation of near and minute objects in the foreground, increasing with the size of the lens which he has employed. [59] Sir Francis Chantrey, the celebrated sculptor, shewed me, many years ago, a Sketch-Book, containing numerous drawings which he had made with the _Camera Lucida_, while travelling from London to Edinburgh by the Lakes. He pointed out to me the flatness, or rather lowness, of hills, which to his own eye appeared much higher, but which, notwithstanding, gave to him the idea of a greater elevation. In order to put this opinion to the test of experiment, I had drawings made by a skilful artist of the three Eildon hills opposite my residence on the Tweed, and was surprised to obtain, by comparing them with their true perspective outlines, a striking confirmation of the observation made by Sir Francis Chantrey. In his admirable chapter “On Finish,” Mr. Ruskin has established, beyond a doubt, the most important principle in the art of painting. “The finishing of nature,” he states, “consists not in the smoothing of surface, but the filling of space, and the multiplication of life and thought;” and hence he draws the conclusion, that “finishing means, in art, simply telling more truth.” Titian, Tintoret, Bellini, and Veronese have, as he has shewn, wrought upon this principle, delineating vein by vein in the leaf of the vine, petal by petal in the borage-blossoms, the very snail-shells on the ground, the stripe of black bark in the birch-tree, and the clusters of the ivy-leaved toad-flax in the rents of their walls; and we have seen that a modern artist, Delaroche, considers a _finish_ of _inconceivable minuteness_ as neither disturbing the repose of the masses, nor interfering with the general effect in a picture.