n looking at a portrait by one of them. The
woman for whom it was meant was standing by my side, young and lovely;
the portrait hung there neither young nor lovely, but a wrinkled
caricature twenty years older than the model."

"I surely know the portrait you mean; Lady D----'s."

"Yes. He had simply, under pretence of following nature, caricatured
her into a woman twenty years older than she is."

"But did you ever see a modern portrait which more perfectly expressed
character; which more completely fulfilled the requirements which you
laid down a few evenings since?"

"Never; and that makes me all the more cross with the wilful mistake
of it. He had painted every wrinkle."

"Why not, if they were there?"

"Because he had painted a face not one-twentieth of the size of life.
What right had he to cram into that small space all the marks which
nature had spread over a far larger one?"

"Why not, again, if he diminished the marks in proportion?"

"Just what neither he nor any man could do, without making them so
small as to be invisible, save under a microscope: and the result was,
that he had caricatured every wrinkle, as his friend has in those
horrible knuckles of Shem's wife. Besides, I deny utterly your
assertion that one is bound to paint what is there. On that very
fallacy are they all making shipwreck."

"Not paint what is there? And you are the man who talks of art being
highest when it copies nature."

"Exactly. And therefore you must paint, not what is there, but what
you see there. They forget that human beings are men with two eyes,
and not daguerreotype lenses with one eye, and so are contriving and
striving to introduce into their pictures the very defect of the
daguerreotype which the stereoscope is required to correct."

"I comprehend. They forget that the double vision of our two eyes
gives a softness, and indistinctness, and roundness, to every
outline."

"Exactly so; and therefore, while for distant landscapes, motionless,
and already softened by atmosphere, the daguerreotype is invaluable
(I shall do nothing else this summer but work at it), yet for taking
portraits, in any true sense, it will be always useless, not only for
the reason I just gave, but for another one which the pre-Raphaelites
have forgotten."

"Because all the features cannot be in focus at once?"

"Oh no, I am not speaking of that. Art, for aught I know, may overcome
that; for it is a mere defect in the instrument.