stream for a few hours in order to build his palace in a region of imperishable natural beauty.  If, however, one takes one’s stand on the ruined walls of the imperial abode and looks out over the broad plains of the Rhine valley, which at that time were already cleared land, while the chain of hills along the left bank, which are so monotonous at present, were still covered with woods, then one can estimate to some extent the delight caused by the view spreading before the gaze of the emperor.  His castle at the edge of the wood, as it were on the borders of night and old barbarity, looked out upon the open, and under the windows stretched the broad agricultural land of the Rheingau, from whose virgin soil the first vines were just beginning to sprout, adorned with new settlements and roads—­surely a royal spectacle for the eye of those days.  It was, so to speak, the symbol of the universal historical mission, not only of the emperor but of the entire age—­namely, to root up, to clear, to procure light.  And thus the same landscape which today is considered, if not exactly commonplace, yet at the most idyllic, may have appeared imposing and imperial to the people of a thousand years ago.

It is because of this varying eye for natural scenery—­which is the eye of generations succeeding one another in the course of history—­that landscape painting, which conveys to us the most trustworthy information of this variation of vision, does not belong solely to the sphere of the esthetician; the historian of civilization must also study this most subjective of all plastic representations.

It is well known that even the most beautiful region is not in itself a real work of art.  Man alone creates artistically; nature does not.  A landscape such as meets our gaze out of doors is not beautiful in itself, it only possesses, possibly, the capability of being spiritualized and refined into beauty in the eye of the spectator.  Only in so far is it a work of art as Nature has furnished the raw material for such, while each beholder first fashions it artistically and endows it with a soul in the mirror of his eye.  Nature is made beautiful only by the self-deception of the spectator.

Therefore does the peasant ridicule the city man who deceives himself to the extent of becoming enthusiastic over the beauties of a region which leaves the other quite cool.  For he who has not something of the artist about him, who cannot paint beautiful landscapes in his head, will never see any outside.  Beautiful nature, this most subjective of all works of art, which is painted on the retina of the eye instead of on wood or canvas, will differ every time according to the mental viewpoint of the onlooker; and as it is with individuals so it is with whole generations.  The comprehension of the artistically beautiful is not half so dependent upon great cultural presuppositions as the comprehension of the naturally beautiful.  With every great evolution of civilization a new “vision” is engendered for a different kind of natural beauty.