The tendency to improve upon nature is a wave of activity of the mind which rises higher than the tendency of copying nature, the former being productive, the latter more impressive. However, the virtue of both tendencies is peculiar in every case. The former tends towards the Creator, whereas the latter toward creation. Success in the first aspect of art is slow but sure; but in the second aspect, of improving, it may turn the right or the wrong way. The rhythm of the former is smooth, slow, and mobile; of the latter active, emphatic, and balancing. The art of copying is less intelligible to many than the art of improving. To appreciate the art of the one who copies, a deep insight is needed, even so deep an insight as that of the artist who dived deep into the ocean of beauty and from the bottom brought forth pearls in form and color. There is a tendency which often seems to increase in an imaginative artist, whereby the interest in his own art may go far from nature. Very often even this may prove successful; but at the end of a close examination it must prove to have turned fatal, for the safety of art rests only in keeping hand in hand with nature.