A Painter's Camp in the Highlands, and Thoughts about Art, Volume 1

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Macmillan and Company, 1862 - 489 pages
 

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Page 182 - Coe approaches nearer to the stony Arabian landscape than any other scenery in Scotland, for the mountains have a barren strength and steepness which remind one continually of the stone buttresses of Sinai, as we have seen Sinai in photographs and the drawings of John Lewis.
Page 153 - And the said Philip Gilbert Hamerton bound and obliged himself and his foresaids to flit and remove himself, his wife, bairns, family, servants, goods, and gear, forth and from the said possession at the expiry of this tack,. and to leave the same void and redd to the effect that the said First parties or their foresaids, or others in their name, may then enter thereto, and enjoy the same in all time thereafter.
Page 183 - For so long as history shall be read, and treachery hated, that name, Glencoe, shall thrill mankind with undiminished horror ! The story is a century old now ; the human race has heard it talked over for a hundred years. But the tale is as fresh in its fearful interest as the latest murder in the newspapers. Kind hospitality was never so cruelly requited ; British soldiers were never at once so cowardly and so ferocious. That massacre was not warfare ; it was not the execution of justice ; it was...
Page 18 - What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion ; it is...
Page 213 - ... my note-book, intending at some future period to paint the castle as I saw it then. The moon was golden now, and near her setting ; she hung over the opposite shore of the lake, and laid a long, unquiet path of light across it. Her warm, low light glanced across the thick ivy on the castle wall. Ardhonnel is an exquisite little island. There is just room enough upon it for the narrow stronghold and no more. A...
Page 176 - I remained pacing up and down the deck, anxiously questioning each quarter of the grey canopy that enveloped us. At last, about four in the morning, I fancied some change was going to take place : the heavy wreaths of vapour seemed to be imperceptibly separating, and in a few minutes more the solid roof of grey suddenly split asunder, and I beheld through the gap — thousands of feet overhead, as if suspended in the crystal sky — a cone of illuminated snow.
Page 273 - There is no effect of sky possible in the lowlands which may not in equal perfection be seen among the hills ; but there are effects by tens of thousands, for ever invisible and inconceivable to the inhabitant of the plains, manifested among the hills in the course of one day. The mere power of familiarity with the clouds, of walking with them and above them, alters and renders clear our whole conception of the baseless architecture of the sky; and for the beauty of it there is more in a single wreath...
Page 387 - ... more than if the thing had been fairly chiselled away by the hand of a mighty sculptor. Rocks alter in apparent shape as the light changes. A wreath of mist creeps stealthily, and shows you a chasm you never suspected yesterday; a sunbeam falls, and a great crag leaps out to bask in it like an eagle from the copse. And after a certain practical apprenticeship, the student at last discovers that the only truth of landscape-painting is temporary effect, and that real form belongs to sculpture alone....
Page xxv - ... whereon no shadow had fallen the livelong day, I determined, in spite of the rain, to be off to the moors to choose a site for my encampment. Not very far from this house still dwells an old servant of my uncle's, with whom I am on the friendliest terms. So I called upon this neighbour on my way and asked him if he would take a walk with me to the hills. Jamie stared a little and remarked that "it ur feefil weet," but accompanied me nevertheless, and a very pleasant walk we had of it.

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