Page:The Daughters of England.djvu/98

Rh while the same degree of deviation from the outline of a face, will sometimes entirely destroy, not only the likeness, but the beauty, of the whole. Even a branch of a tree, and sometimes a whole tree, may be omitted in a landscape; but if a nose, or an eye, were found wanting in the drawing of a face, it would be difficult to treat the performance with anything like gravity.

Thus, then, the vanity of the young students is more severely put to the test in delineations of the human form, than it can be in landscape drawing; and thus they are apt to say, they have no genius for heads or figures, because their love of excellence, though sufficient for the purposes of landscape drawing, is not strong enough to support them under the mortification of having produced a badly drawn face, or figure.

It is not the least amongst the advantages of drawing, that it induces a habit of perpetually aiming at ideal excellence; in other words, that it draws the mind away from considering the grosser qualities of matter, to the contemplation of beauty as an abstract idea; that it gives a definiteness to our notions of objects in general, and enables us to describe, with greater accuracy, the character and appearance of everything we see.

Nor ought we by any means to overlook the value of that which the pencil actually produces. Sketches of scenery, however defective as works of art, are amongst the precious memorials of which time, the great destroyer, is unable to deprive us. In them the traveller lives again, through all the joys and sorrows of his distant wanderings. He breathes again the atmosphere of that far world which his eye will never more behold. He treads again the mountain-path where his step was never weary. He sees the sunshine on the snowy peaks which rise no more to him. He hears again the shout of joyous exultation, when