Yet within this, mantling the remotest depths, there is a sheen of light, a gleam of hope and faith.

In our own times there is little to refer to illustrative of excellence in this branch of Art.  Overbeck makes frequent use of natural scenery, and his delicate yet firm outlines repeat, hill and valley and clouds, the sentiment of peace and purity which pervades his noble productions.

Not that there are not produced frequently, and especially in France, works remarkable for truth and power.  But, too often, the truths are redundant, and the power vanquishes the sentiments of the group.

One artist in France, Rosa Bonheur, has, however, embodied conceptions so noble, so in unison with the finest Nature, that its most glorious and most significant scenery, rendered with a handling akin to the old mastership, is alone adequate to sympathize with and sustain them.  I need but refer to the wonderful view of the Pyrenees in the picture of “The Muleteers,” the tender morning spirit of that heathery scene in the Highlands, and that miracle of representation, the near ground, crisp and frosty, of Mr. Belmont’s “Hunters in Early Morning.”

American Art, as represented in Italy, has few examples of excellence in this branch of painting.  Its followers have wrought more persistently in other directions, toward the expression of a class of ideals rarely involving the one which we have attempted to analyze.  Yet, occasionally, an artist has appeared, making Rome or Florence his home long enough to win a place, which, when he has departed, is not quickly filled, who has ideas of history and events calling for the record of the palette; or there has been wrought in the studio of some resident painter a composition in which landscape has been employed as accessory.

In many instances there have been produced works which reflect the highest honor upon our country.  As it is foreign to the purpose of the present paper to deal with other than the different phases of landscape-painting, we forbear to speak as their merits suggest of the figure portions of the works of Mr. Rothermel, the result of his brief sojourn in Italy.  In any passage of scenery, and particularly in sky forms and tones, the expression and character are always such as support vigorously the action of his group.  We say vigorously; for Mr. Rothermel, in his Italian pictures, revealed an artistic nature related to humanity in its most agitated moods, as in the “Lear,” and in the “Saint Agnese,”—­this beautiful picture being, however, a higher conception, inasmuch as in it the spirit might find some rest in the stillness of the maiden Agnese, already saint and about to be martyr, and in the deep blue sky, on whose field linger white clouds, like lambs “shepherded by the slow unwilling winds.”