Mr. S. H. Butcher,[10] for instance, points out how landscape painting only became a serious and independent branch of art among the Greeks after the fourth century B.C.--that is to say, long over a century after the date when, according to Freeman, the decline of Hellas began; and, in speaking of the Greeks in their best period, he says: "They do not attach themselves to nature with that depth of feeling, with that gentle melancholy, that characterizes the moderns.... Their impatient imagination only traverses nature to pass beyond it to the drama of human life." J. A. Symonds tells us that "Conciseness, simplicity and an almost prosaic accuracy are the never-failing attributes of classical descriptive art--moreover, humanity was always more present to their minds than to ours. Nothing evoked sympathy from the Greek unless it appeared before him in human shape, or in connection with some human sentiment. The ancient poets do not describe inanimate nature as such, or attribute a vague spirituality to fields and clouds. That feeling for the beauty of the world which is embodied in such poems as Shelley's _Ode to the West Wind_ gave birth in their imagination to definite legends, involving some dramatic interest and conflict of passions."[11] And Mahaffy and Mr. W. R. Hardie tell the same story.[12] But even among sensible moderns, uninfected by sentimental fever, the love of nature is mostly of a purely utilitarian kind, as witness the love of cornfields, hayfields and orchards. The farmer at certain times gazes kindly at the purple hills behind his acres of cultivated land, because their colour indicates the coming rain. The cattle-breeder smiles as he surveys the Romney marshes, and thinks of the splendid pastureland they would make. In fact, the attitude of sensible mankind in general towards landscape, as landscape, seems to have been pretty well summarized by the writer of the 104th Psalm, from whom, according to W. H. Rhiel, the Christian world, and especially the Teutonic part of it, seems to have derived much of their love of the beauties of Nature.[13] What constitutes the artistic beauty in a painted landscape, then, is the mood, the particular human quality, that the artist throws into it. As the French painters say, a landscape is a state of the soul; and unless the particular mood or idea with which the artist invests a natural scene have some value and interest, and be painted in a commanding or ruler manner, it is a mere piece of superfluous foolery, which may, however, find its proper place on a great railway poster or in an estate agent's illustrated catalogue.