Galleporto Bavicarius Directory 18
Page 04
We saw large families of _ciancias_--beautiful birds with velvety black bodies speckled with white, and fan tails of rich brown colour, feathers of the same colour being also on the outer half of the wings. They possessed slender, most elegant necks, small brown-crested heads, and light yellow chests. Seen at a distance they were not, in shape, unlike pheasants. Twenty or thirty together at a time could be seen playing among the lower branches of the trees along the edge of the river. Then there were small birds of a beautiful metallic blue-black, with very long tails; these latter were innumerable near the water.
In a comprehensive sense Impressionism includes all artists who represent their subjects with breadth and collectiveness rather than in detail--in the way in which we see a view at the first glance, before we have time to apprehend its minor parts. The advocates of impressionism now claim that it is the most reformatory movement in modern painting; it is undeniably in full accord with the spirit of the time in putting aside older methods and conventions and introducing a new manner of seeing and representing Nature.
It is an action which may take its place by the side of the myth of Mucius Scaevola, or the real exploit of that brother of the poet AEschylus, who, when the Persians were flying from Marathon, clung to a ship till both his hands were hewn away, and then seized it with his teeth, leaving his name as a portent even in the splendid calendar of Athenian heroes. Captain Bethune, without call or need, making his notes merely, as he tells us, from the suggestions of his own mind as he revised the proof-sheets, informs us, at the bottom of the page, that "it reminds him of the familiar lines,--
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