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and classify in their memories for constant reference as tests, and for constant use in all branches of design, and those grand leading impressions of sublimity most readily gathered from Nature's inexhaustible storehouse of beauty, are of the utmost import, and exercise a marvellous influence upon all human Art. The means by which they do so most directly is through the "association of ideas," giving to forms and lines otherwise expressionless the power of recalling at the artist's will echoes of and reflexions from the emotions of delight experienced in the enjoyment of their original prototypes. When, under the artist's hands these primitive forms are reduced to a tangible existence as abstract forms, the wonderful arithmetical and mathematical properties pertaining to all the leading geometrical forms and figures gradually admit of patient evolution. Pure forms become classified in his recollection by their geometrical conditions and affinities, as well as through their associations with Nature, and the artist's memory so stored is converted into a great bank of deposit upon which he can draw such draughts at will for illimitable amounts of beauty as need fear no dishonour nor exhaustion, while he may always have the great delight of feeling that the more he draws for the more remains behind.
A correct estimate of the mechanical value of the great families of form under varying conditions and aspects, is a fund of knowledge which once arrived at never deserts the artist, and will be found useful to him every day and every hour, when called upon to combine those lines and forms into what we habitually recognize as works of art.
The next stage in the developement of his appreciation of pure form should be his profound study of the various conditions under which the same form may be made to wear different aspects, and convey different ideas, to the spectator. Form in creation is made visible to us by light; but if there were no counterbalancing element to light we should be faint with "excess of light," and the power of vision would convey