Page:Masterpieces of the sea (Morris, Richards, 1912).djvu/78

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS through him. He was to see justly and report accurately and the soul within him would make pictures if he only kept his head level and his eye alert and bent to his task.

Without a soul to respond to something larger in nature than the detail, this faithful copying would, of course, result only in an accurate photograph. There would be a transcript, with the spirit omitted, as in the case with so much that is called art—a semblance of form without its moving principle.

But it was Mr. Richards' high merit as a man and as an artist that he brought to this task, so devotedly and lovingly performed, a soul that infused life into the work; that he lent it his own devout and tender love of beauty and his veneration of nature's living impulse. He copied what he saw with minute fidelity; he was led to copy because he loved what he saw and recognized the divine light shining through its surfaces; but if he had not also brought to the worship of nature the 50