and
intricacies; the _coloring_ is always worth more than the _form_, the
sensation than the idea. Their heroes and heroines are grotesque beings,
sentimental caricatures, souls not to be comprehended, always placed in
unnatural situations, and surrounded with dark, gloomy, and impenetrable
mysteries. If their readers can be made to exclaim at every page:
'Inconceivable! astonishing! original!' they consider their work
perfect. Such poets seldom attempt long poems; if they should
imprudently do so, we find but little sequence, and nothing of that
clear order, of that marvellous _unity_, which mark the works of the
masters. Everything is sought to flatter that pretentious vanity of the
limited understanding which piques itself on its stereotyped knowledge,
always striving to usurp the higher empire of the divining soul. Such
writing certainly requires subtlety of intellect, for talent is required
to discover that which no one can see; to invent relations where none
exist. We may, indeed, often observe great perfection in the details,
high finish in the execution, keen intellect in the analysis; but
nothing in the thoughts which appeals to the universal heart. Brilliant
pictures succeed to brilliant pictures, decoration to decoration, but
there is an utter want of essential unity. Absorbed in the sensuous
gorgeousness of highly colored details, if they can but glue together
startling and overwrought images, they are satisfied, even while
neglecting the principal idea. They seize everything by the outside;
nothing by the heart.

The painters of this class give us glaring colors and violent contrasts;
the musicians, antitheses, concetti, ingenious combinations, _tours de
force_, rather than flowing melodies or profound harmonies. The power
they _wish_, to possess spoils that they _really have_; all _true_
inspiration abandons the hopeless artist in the midst of his ingenious
subtleties; it flies before his fantastic conceits; laughs at the
follies of his prurient fancies; and withdraws its solemn light from the
vain and presumptuous intellect, doting ever over its own fancied
superiority. Inspiration, that holy light only vouchsafed to the loving
soul, speaks to man in the silence of the subjective intellect. If the
heart is tossed by a thousand passing and selfish passions, how can its
solemn but simple and tender voice be heard? Suffering such inflated
spirits to plume themselves upon the transitory admiration they are