sures grows up during
absence.

Little by little, through divers probations, we begin to feel ground
under our feet. We have our likes and dislikes, our favorite masters,
pictures and statues, which are like old friends. Instead of
weariness, vexation and a vain effort to comprehend, a delightful
sense of repose and coming pleasure steals over us as we enter a
gallery. The lovely forms, the noble composition, the delicious color
minister to us, mind and body, and soothe us like music or the smile
of Nature; and the plastic arts have this advantage over music, that
they are impersonal. We cannot identify ourselves with what moves us
in painting or sculpture or architecture: on the contrary, it lifts us
out of ourselves, away from our griefs and cares, instead of giving
them a more intense and poignant expression, which at some moments is
all the divinest music seems to do. Their influence is always benign
and serene, and we may always have recourse to it, while the secrets
of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann lie hidden between leaves,
in the keeping of crabbed little hieroglyphs, and a voice, an
instrument, or perhaps an orchestra, is needed to reveal them. The
picture, the statue, has no secrets but open secrets. You stand before
it, and the very soul and essence of it comes softly forth and
breathes upon yours. Oh moments of delight, when we lose ourselves in
the soft Arcadian mood of Claude Lorrain, in the cool, tranquil revery
of the Dutch landscape-painters, in the giant impetuosity of
Tintoretto, in the rich, warm sensuousness of Titian, in the glowing
mystery of Giorgione, in the calm, profound devoutness of the early
Flemings, in the religious rapture of the early Italians! It needs no
jot of technical knowledge for this, however much that may enhance our
enjoyment, as it undoubtedly must. But the inspiration of a work of
art may be felt by any one.

I have considered sculpture less than painting in these remarks,
partly because to the majority it is less interesting, and partly
because it seems to me so much simpler in itself. The absence of
color, the relief of form, the unity of idea, the limitation of each
subject to a single figure, or at most two or three, perhaps too the
repose and simplicity which characterize antique art, make the path
less arduous. I never, even in the infinite vistas of the Vatican,
felt the fatigue and perplexity which have beset me in the smallest
picture-galleries.

If