Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/318

LANDSCAPE PAINTING done by hand in the old days with such splendid rhythmic swing of muscle are now matters of revolving wheels and clattering chains and knives. Even our buildings have deteriorated—at least from the artist's point of view; for the comfortable villa farmhouse of the present day does not cling lovingly to the soil and become part of the environing landscape, as did the spreading, low-hung buildings of our fathers. And so, to quench the eternal thirst for beauty, we must needs return once more to kindly nature, whose beauty is exhaustless and everlasting. Her skies have lost none of their early crystalline charm of color; her hills and her rock-bound coasts are as grand as ever; her trees, her rivers and her spreading fields are as beautiful and as appealing now as in the days of Hesiod. But, precious beyond all other things, [250]