But that is not the only reason.

It is because the sight of that eternal waste of waters, without a boundary line, without the variety or movement of life upon it, bores them, and they prefer to look out upon the country with all its expressive and varying outlines." "But the expression which you see in a landscape--you put that into it yourself, by an effort of your own imagination.

Forests and mountains are in themselves as inanimate as the sea." "Quite so; but the landscape has features which remind us of something else, which play, as it were, upon the keyboard of our associations, and it thus calls up the pictures with which we proceed to enliven it.
The sea does nothing of this, and the best proof of that is, that no painter has ever yet used the sea by itself for his model.

Did you ever know of an artist who painted nothing but the sea ?" "Yes, Aiwasowky." "Who is he ?" "A Russian who paints extraordinary sea pieces." "What! Only water--without shore, or people, or ships ?" "I remember a picture with absolutely nothing but water, only a spar, or a mast floating on it." "There, you see!" she cried in triumph.

"That broken mast is a trick of the artist.