These are the glasses that tested
poison, by being shattered into fragments at its touch. The strangest
and ugliest old crockery, pictured over with monstrosities,--the Palissy
ware, embossed with vegetables, fishes, lobsters, that look absolutely
real; the delicate Sevres china, each piece made inestimable by pictures
from a master's hand;--in short, it is a despair and misery to see so
much that is curious and beautiful, and to feel that far the greater
portion of it will slip out of the memory, and be as if we had never seen
it. But I mean to look again and again at these things. We soon
perceive that the present day does not engross all the taste and
ingenuity that has ever existed in the mind of man; that, in fact, we are
a barren age in that respect.
August 20th.--I went to the Exhibition on Monday, and again yesterday,
and measurably enjoyed both visits. I continue to think, however, that a
picture cannot be fully enjoyed except by long and intimate acquaintance
with it, nor can I quite understand what the enjoyment of a connoisseur
is. He is not usually, I think, a man of deep, poetic feeling, and does
not deal with the picture through his heart, nor set it in a poem, nor
comprehend it morally. If it be a landscape, he is not entitled to judge
of it by his intimacy with nature; if a picture of human action, he has
no experience nor sympathy of life's deeper passages. However, as my
acquaintance with pictures increases, I find myself recognizing more and
more the merit of the acknowledged masters of the art; but, possibly, it
is only because I adopt the wrong principles which may have been laid
down by the connoisseurs.
Pages:
775
776
777
778
779
780
781
782
783
784
785
786
787
788
789
790
791
792
793
794
795
796
797
798
799