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.  Assuredly, much of the love of mystery in our romances, our poetry, our art, and, above all, in our metaphysics, must come under that definition so long ago given by the great Greek, “speaking ingeniously concerning smoke.”  And much of the instinct, which, partially developed in painting, may be now seen throughout every mode of exertion of mind,—­the easily encouraged doubt, easily excited curiosity, habitual agitation, and delight in the changing and the marvellous, as opposed to the old quiet serenity of social custom and religious faith,—­is again deeply defined in those few words, the “dethroning of Jupiter,” the “coronation of the whirlwind.”

Nor of whirlwind merely, but also of darkness or ignorance respecting all stable facts.  That darkening of the foreground to bring out the white cloud, is, in one aspect of it, a type of the subjection of all plain and positive fact, to what is uncertain and unintelligible.  And, as we examine farther into the matter, we shall be struck by another great difference between the old and modern landscape, namely, that in the old no one ever thought of drawing anything but as well as he could.  That might not be well, as we have seen in the case of rocks; but it was as well as he could, and always distinctly.  Leaf, or stone, or animal, or man, it was equally drawn with care and clearness, and its essential characters shown.  If it was an oak tree, the acorns were drawn; if a flint pebble, its veins were drawn; if an arm of the sea, its fish were drawn; if a group of figures, their faces and dresses were drawn—­to the very last subtlety of expression and end of thread that could be got into the space, far off or near.  But now our ingenuity is all “concerning smoke.”  Nothing is truly drawn but that; all else is vague, slight, imperfect; got with as little pains as possible.  You examine your closest foreground, and find no leaves; your largest oak, and find no acorns; your human figure, and find a spot of red paint instead of a face; and in all this, again and again, the Aristophanic words come true, and the clouds seem to be “great goddesses to idle men.”