human hopes and fears, joys and sorrows; and we end by finding that our so-called physical facts are but elements in a definitely organised whole of thought and feeling. We seem to start with natural facts, and they change under our hands into the symbols of mere ideas and emotions. Our whole conception of the scope and possibilities of art turns upon the view we take of the artist’s means of expression. Are we to regard pictorial art as a medium for imaging and recording the visible facts of the physical world, or as symbols of states of consciousness? And if we take the latter view, what is the exact relation of these symbols to the visible world, to the world of common perception? So far as I know, only one English art critic has attempted anything like an adequate discussion of these questions. It will help us, I think, if we glance for a moment at Mr. Ruskin’s treatment of these subjects. In the first volume of _Modern Painters_ we are told that the two great ends of landscape painting are (1) to induce in the spectator’s mind the faithful conception of any natural object whatsoever, and (2) to inform him of the thoughts and feelings with which these’ (_i.e._ the natural objects) ‘were regarded by the artist himself (_Modern Painters_, Part II., Sec. 1, Ch. i. p. 44). In attaining the first end, Mr. Ruskin adds, ‘the painter only places the spectator where he stands himself; he sets him before the landscape and leaves him.... But he [the spectator] has nothing of thought given to him, no new ideas, no unknown feelings, forced on his attention or his heart.’ ‘But in attaining the second end, the artist not only _places_ the spectator, but--makes him a sharer in his own strong feelings and quick thoughts;--and leaves him ... ennobled and instructed, under the sense of having not only beheld a new scene, but of having held communion with a new mind, and having been endowed for a time with the keen perception and the impetuous emotions of a nobler and more penetrating intelligence.’ It may seem at first sight that Mr. Ruskin is simply distinguishing two kinds of landscape painting, such as the simply topographical from the more imaginative kind. And he does say that ‘it is possible to reach what I have stated to be the first end of art, the representation of facts, without reaching the second, the representation of thoughts.’ But the point he is chiefly concerned to emphasise is the complete dependence of the second of these aims upon the representation of facts. An artist can give us physical facts, he says, without expressing his thoughts and feelings, but no artist can express thoughts and feelings without the accurate representation of facts. This is the point, he says, that he wishes at present ‘especially to insist upon,’ and this dependence of thought upon fact, or ‘truth’ as he generally prefers to call it, forms, as I understand it, the theoretical basis upon which a large part of Mr. Ruskin’s art teaching rests.