res, whose lives have been
given for the production of these materials of effect, have not died in
vain.[5]

Sec. 13. Yet, for all this, I do not say the lover of the lower
picturesque is a monster in human form. He is by no means this, though
truly we might at first think so, if we came across him unawares, and
had not met with any such sort of person before. Generally speaking, he
is kind-hearted, innocent of evil, but not broad in thought; somewhat
selfish, and incapable of acute sympathy with others; gifted at the same
time with strong artistic instincts and capacities for the enjoyment of
varied form, and light, and shade, in pursuit of which enjoyment his
life is passed, as the lives of other men are, for the most part, in the
pursuit of what _they_ also like,--be it honor, or money, or indolent
pleasure,--very irrespective of the poor people living by the stagnant
canal. And, in some sort, the hunter of the picturesque is better than
many of these; inasmuch as he is simple-minded and capable of
unostentatious and economical delights, which, if not very helpful to
other people, are at all events utterly uninjurious, even to the victims
or subjects of his picturesque fancies; while to many others his work is
entertaining and useful. And, more than all this, even that delight
which he _seems_ to take in misery is not altogether unvirtuous. Through
all his enjoyment there runs a certain under current of tragical
passion,--a real vein of human sympathy;--it lies at the root of all
those strange morbid hauntings of his; a sad excitement, such as other
people feel at a tragedy, only less in degree, just enough, indeed, to
give a deeper tone to his pleasure, and to make him choose for his
subject the broken stones of a cottage wall, rather than of a roadside
bank, the picturesque beauty of form in each being supposed precisely
the same: and, together with this slight tragical feeling, there is also
a humble and romantic sympathy; a vague desire, in his own mind, to live
in cottages rather than in palaces; a joy in humble things, a
contentment and delight in makeshifts, a secret persuasion (in many
respects a true one) that there is in these ruined cottages a happiness
often quite as great as in kings' palaces, and a virtue and nearness to
God infinitely greater and holier than can commonly be found in any
other kind of place; so that the misery in which he exults is not, as he
sees it, misery, but nobleness,--"poor, and