es and pleases you, look at it by
all means, return to it again and again, and see whether the charm
works or wears out: it may be the starting-point of your whole career
of enjoyment. Do not run counter to your natural impulse if you have
any: no matter whether you suspect the picture to be bad or by an
inferior master, look at it and enjoy it as much as you can. If you
are only honest with yourself, you will not care for it long if it be
poor.

A good plan for getting our ideas into order on going into a gallery
is to take one master and look only at his works for a day or two, and
then at the others of his school, else there is a terrible confusion
of names, dates, periods, manners and subjects in our heads. This
cannot always be accomplished, for in some choice collections there
are but a few specimens of each master, though in the large ones there
are always more than enough for a beginner's first day. It is best to
begin with a comparatively modern master, and work back gradually,
otherwise the eye is puzzled by inaccuracies of drawing, perspective,
color. The early painters can hardly be expected to delight us at
first: we are shocked by the unnatural proportions, the grotesque
countenances. To cite an extreme case, the first view of Giotto's
frescoes, where men and women with bodies of board, long jointless
fingers, rigid plastered hair, and dark-rimmed slits for eyes whose
oblique glance imparts an air of suspicion to the whole assembly, will
suggest merely a notion of their grotesqueness. By and by we shall
grow used to the deformities, and recognize the primitive truthfulness
of attitude and expression, the spirit which animates these ungainly
forms and faces, until at length we look at the painter with the eyes
of his contemporaries, and judge him by the standards of his own time,
on which his claims rest. Then we shall admire him. The Venetians of
the sixteenth century are the easiest to look at, however much of
their genius and wonderful skill be lost on a novice, for they knew as
much about anatomy and perspective as any painter of to-day, and their
men and women are such glorious creatures, with backgrounds of such
stately architecture or such magnificent scenery, all displayed in a
revel of color, that pleasure outruns comprehension in the beholder.

The subject of a work of art exercises a great influence at first.
Some subjects naturally attract, others awe, others repel, and some
have no interest f