The aspects of sunset and sunrise,
with all their attendant phenomena of cloud and mist, are watchfully
delineated; and in ordinary daylight landscape, the sky is considered
of so much importance, that a principal mass of foliage, or a whole
foreground, is unhesitatingly thrown into shade merely to bring out
the form of a white cloud. So that, if a general and characteristic
name were needed for modern landscape art, none better could be
invented than "the service of clouds."
And this name would, unfortunately, be characteristic of our art in
more ways than one. In the last chapter, I said that all the Greeks
spoke kindly about the clouds, except Aristophanes; and he, I am sorry
to say (since his report is so unfavourable), is the only Greek who
had studied them attentively. He tells us, first, that they are "great
goddesses to idle men"; then, that they are "mistresses of disputings,
and logic, and monstrosities, and noisy chattering"; declares that
whoso believes in their divinity must first disbelieve in Jupiter, and
place supreme power in the hands of an unknown god "Whirlwind"; and,
finally, he displays their influence over the mind of one of their
disciples, in his sudden desire "to speak ingeniously concerning
smoke."[112]
There is, I fear, an infinite truth in this Aristophanic judgment
applied to our modern cloud-worship.
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