Page:Table-Talk, vol. 2 (1822).djvu/388

 singularity of its appearance, and of riveting the imagination by its intense beauty. I may just notice here in passing, that I think the effect of moonlight is treated in an ideal manner in the well-known line in Shakespear—

The image is heightened by the exquisiteness of the expression beyond its natural beauty, and it seems as if there could be no end to the delight taken in it.—A number of sheep coming to a pool of water to drink, with shady trees in the background, the rest of the flock following them, and the shepherd and his dog left carelessly behind, is surely the ideal in landscape-composition, if the ideal has its source in the interest excited by a subject, in its power of drawing the affections after it linked in a golden chain, and in the desire of the mind to dwell on it for ever. The ideal, in a word, is the height of the pleasing, that which satisfies and accords with the inmost longing of the soul: the picturesque is merely a sharper and bolder impression of reality. A morning mist drawing a slender veil over all objects is at once picturesque and ideal; for it in the first place excites immediate surprise and admiration, and in the next a wish for it to continue, and a fear lest it