t at great
ceremonies where there are grand robes and processions; I feel myself
in the presence of some higher life than my own. But when I begin to
examine the pictures one by on the life goes out of them, or else is
something violent and strange to me. It must be my own dulness. I am
seeing so much all at once, and not understanding half of it. That
always makes one feel stupid. It is painful to be told that anything
is very fine and not be able to feel that it is fine--something like
being blind, while people talk of the sky."

"Oh, there is a great deal in the feeling for art which must be
acquired," said Will. (It was impossible now to doubt the directness
of Dorothea's confession.) "Art is an old language with a great many
artificial affected styles, and sometimes the chief pleasure one gets
out of knowing them is the mere sense of knowing. I enjoy the art of
all sorts here immensely; but I suppose if I could pick my enjoyment to
pieces I should find it made up of many different threads. There is
something in daubing a little one's self, and having an idea of the
process."

"You mean perhaps to be a painter?" said Dorothea, with a new direction
of interest. "You mean to make painting your profession? Mr. Casaubon
will like to hear that you have chosen a profession."

"No, oh no," said Will, with some coldness. "I have quite made up my
mind against it. It is too one-sided a life. I have been seeing a
great deal of the German artists here: I travelled from Frankfort with
one of them. Some are fine, even brilliant fellows--but I should not
like to get into their way of looking at the world entirely from the
studio point of view."

"That I can understand," said Dorothea, cordially. "And in Rome it
seems as if there were so many things which are more wanted in the
world than pictures. But if you have a genius for painting, would it
not be right to take that as a guide? Perhaps you might do better
things than these--or different, so that there might not be so many
pictures almost all alike in the same place."

There was no mistaking this simplicity, and Will was won by it into
frankness. "A man must have a very rare genius to make changes of that
sort. I am afraid mine would not carry me even to the pitch of doing
well what has been done already, at least not so well as to make it
worth while. And I should never succeed in anything by dint of
drudgery. If things don't come easily to me I neve