of the wintry light, of the sharpness of the ice-blocks, of the sickness
of the sick soldier, of the protrusion of the minor objects, that of the
strands of the rope and the nails of the boots, that, I say, on the part
of everything, of its determined purpose of standing out; but that,
above all, of the profiled national hero's purpose, as might be said, of
standing _up_, as much as possible, even indeed of doing it almost on
one leg, in such difficulties, and successfully balancing. So memorable
was that evening to remain for me that nothing could be more strange, in
connection with it, than the illustration by the admired work, on its in
after years again coming before me, of the cold cruelty with which time
may turn and devour its children. The picture, more or less entombed in
its relegation, was lividly dead--and that was bad enough. But half the
substance of one's youth seemed buried with it. There were other
pictorial evenings, I may add, not all of which had the thrill. Deep the
disappointment, on my own part, I remember, at Bryan's Gallery of
Christian Art, to which also, as for great emotions, we had taken the
omnibus after dinner. It cast a chill, this collection of worm-eaten
diptychs and triptychs, of angular saints and seraphs, of black Madonnas
and obscure Bambinos, of such marked and approved "primitives" as had
never yet been shipped to our shores. Mr. Bryan's shipment was presently
to fall, I believe, under grave suspicion, was to undergo in fact fatal
exposure; but it appealed at the moment in apparent good faith, and I
have not forgotten how, conscious that it was fresh from Europe--"fresh"
was beautiful in the connection!--I felt that my yearning should all
have gone out to it. With that inconsequence to handle I doubt whether I
proclaimed that it bored me--any more than I have ever noted till now
that it made me begin badly with Christian art. I like to think that the
collection consisted without abatement of frauds and "fakes" and that if
these had been honest things my perception wouldn't so have slumbered;
yet the principle of interest had been somehow compromised, and I think
I have never since stood before a real Primitive, a primitive of the
primitives, without having first to shake off the grey mantle of that
night. The main disconcertment had been its ugly twist to the name of
Italy, already sweet to me for all its dimness--even could dimness have
prevailed in my felt measure of the pictorial