in the land of bustle and sunshine, to sit in a tempered
light and hear a man sing or improvise stories over his work, to behold
once more vagaries of costume, to let the eye rest upon pictorial
fragments of Italy,--the "old familiar faces" of Roman models, the
endeared outlines of Apennine hills, the _contadina_ bodice and the
brigand hat, until these objects revive to the heart all the romance of
travel.

The technicalities of Art, its refinements of style, its absolute
significance, are, indeed, as dependent for appreciation on a
special endowment as are mathematics; but the general and incidental
associations, in which is involved a world of poetry, may be enjoyed to
the full extent by those whose perception of form, sense of color,
and knowledge of the principles of sculpture, painting, music, and
architecture are notably deficient. It is a law of life and nature, that
truth and beauty, adequately represented, create and diffuse a limitless
element of wisdom and pleasure. Such memorials are talismanic, and
their influence is felt in all the higher and more permanent spheres of
thought and emotion; they are the gracious landmarks that guide humanity
above the commonplace and the material, along the "line of infinite
desires." Art, in its broad and permanent meaning, is a language,--the
language of sentiment, of character, of national impulse, of individual
genius; and for this reason it bears a lesson, a charm, or a sanction
to all,--even those least versed in its rules and least alive to its
special triumphs. Sir Walter Scott was no amateur, yet, through his
reverence for ancestry and his local attachments, portraiture and
architecture had for him a romantic interest. Sydney Smith was impatient
of galleries when he could talk with men and women, and made a practical
joke of buying pictures; yet Newton and Leslie elicited his best humor.
Talfourd cared little and knew less of the treasures of the Louvre, but
lingered there because it had been his friend Hazlitt's Elysium. Indeed,
there are constantly blended associations in the history of English
authors and artists; Reynolds is identified with Johnson and Goldsmith,
Smibert with Berkeley, Barry with Burke, Constable and Wilkie with Sir
George Beaumont, Haydon with Wordsworth, and Leslie with Irving; the
painters depict their friends of the pen, the latter celebrate in
verse or prose the artist's triumphs, and both intermingle thought and
sympathy; and from this co