The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-08-11
TiGiam's LandsCaDcs.

We give the following extract from new
work entitled ''Titians Country, 10y Josiah
Gilbert, author Of ''The Dolamite Mountains,
which has Just been published in London
He was great in mountains, and that he
was so forms his chief claim to greatness in
landscape art. He, almost the first of paint
ers, seems to have felt the abounding eX-
pressiveness of mountain lines, and to have
rendered with a firm hand their strength and
beauty, whether displayed in isolated aspiring
forms, or as they stand grouped in graceful
opposition. More than that, he first led the
way in that appreciation of mountains, as
among the grandest symbols that nature offers
of power, mystery, duration, majesty, and the
like, which, if not unrecognized in the earliest
poetry had yet slumbered through many ages
of culture, and is distinctively a modern pas
sion. AS. for instance doubt if there is an
earlier example than in Titan of a dark,
distant jagged mountain outline, vivldly
relieved by glowing evening sky. Or again,
of that striking effect of distance, isolation,
and mystery, produced by the apparition
of mountain summit peering from behind
nearer ranges of hills, when peak or crest
lifted in air, and bright with beams from some
hidden source of light, seems to give sudden
hint of some strange unknown region IN the
far beyond OF such ghost-like but luminous
shapes Titan offers frequent instances If,
| too the gloom of forests charmed him, he
was eminently susceptible to the gloom and
| awfulness of mountains, which, alien alike to
| classic and medieval taste, are so grateful to
! the modern; and it was surely not only for
the convenience Of deep puppies and rich
| blues, that his mountain forms so often sweep
darllly along the horizon, like a visible thun-
| der-peal, but that he felt their solemn gran
deur. And it must have been from the same
appreciation that he made SO much of the
| fellowship between clouds and mountains.
Other painters had dealt in mountain shapes
of delicate blue repOsing in pure ether, and
for clouds scattered a few woolly patches il
the void above Titan a mountain man, ans
better taught, brought the vapors dowr
among his hills, gave them involution ant
coherence wrapped them round his mountain
peaks, or piled them into vast competing
hulks far into the sky. In a word
without the delicate observation o
Turner. or of Turner's grea
expounder, he was habitually con
scious, as well of the poetry as Of the artis
tic capabilities latent in the interaction o
these two great landscape powers, and com
posed mountain and cloud together, eacl
answering to each like the parts of a chorus
And again there was in Titan a perception
of that physiOgnOmy OF mountains WmcI
gives them personality and makes then
almost instinct with emotion. Sometimes h
places them in sphinX-like attitudes of repose
emhodiments of enormous passive force
sometimes they writhe and twist like hoode
giants struggling to be free from bonds. q
he sets them as tutelary powers to presid
over some gentle scene or nesting village
, for Titan regarded them less as enemies tina
, friends-not as a lowlander shrinking frol
their awfulness, but as a mountaineer, fam
liar with, almost welcoming, their terro
because conscious of their encompassin
strength. The valley among hills, with i
sequestered human life, and walls, and tower
and roofs sheltered beneath some giant mas
= or clingng confdingly to its sides, is seer
, he often dwells upon.