ness that required a refined education to appreciate, yet a loveliness unmistakable, for it owed nothing to superfluity, which is the weakness of mediocrity.
All was in harmony, the massive funnels, which relieved the more massive hull, the tower-like engine-rooms, the hurricane decks and deck-houses, the mighty screw, which champed and churned the waters, the graceful bows, masts and yards, which looked like useless but ornamental head-gear, yet were placed for use if required. When the modern ironclad ship is depicted properly, and also the steam-engine, with its steel lines and telegraph posts, the most faddish of critics will have to sink into silence, or else admire.
Look at the aspect of modesty and reserve the ship has as she lies broadside on the waters, with the gentle backward lean of her masts and funnels, but see her coming on fore-shortened like indomitable and resistless fate, watch the engine sweeping, as never eagle swooped or skater sped, along those glittering lines with those streamers of clouds behind; the valleys are filled with the backward-cast vapours which curl about the cliffs, upstarting boulders, furze bushes and forests, while the fierce dragon rushes on with its jointed body and tail, quivering and undulating.
When the painter gives us that living monster, with the effect of its vibrations and that mystery of cloud behind, we defy the critic to say that the landscape is not the better for this innovation of vitality and force into its former stagnation. It is like God's voice bidding sleeping Nature wake up from the torpor of centuries, it is soul-thrilling, it is vital, but it requires art to depict it, and robust minds to appreciate it, not dilettanti, who may worship the baldness of a
