ed to which it exposes
more of that most beautiful of all objects, the human figure.

{11} Here the author, in the person of respondent, takes occasion to
narrate a real fact.

Thus we have a formidable array of objections to the choice of
_present-day subjects:_ and first, it was objected and granted, that
incidents of the present time are well nigh barren in poetic
attraction for the many. Then it was objected, but not granted, that
their poetic or pictorial counterparts will be equally unattractive
also: but this last remains to be proved. It was said, and is
believed by the author, (and such as doubt it he does not address)
that all good men are more or less poetical in some way or other;
while their poetry shows itself at various times. Thus the
business-man in the street has other to think of than poetry; but
when he is inclined to look at a picture, or in his more poetical
humour, will he neglect the pictorial counterpart of what he
neglected before? To test this, show him a camera obscura, where
there is a more literal transcript of present-day nature than any
painting can be:--what is the result? He expresses no anxiety to quit
it, but a great curiosity to investigate; he feels it is very
beautiful, indeed more beautiful than nature: and this he will say is
because he does not see nature as an artist does. Now the solution of
all this is easy: 1st. He is in a mood of mind which renders him
accessible to the influences of poetry, which was not before the
case. 2nd. He looks at that steadily which he before regarded
cursorily; and, as the picture remains in his eye, it acquires an
amount of harmony, in behoof of an intrinsic harmony resident in the
organ itself, which exerts proportionately modifying influences on
all things that enter within it; and of the nervous harmony, and the
beautifully apportioned stimuli of alternating ocular spectra. 3rd.
There is a resolution of discord effected by the instrument itself,
inasmuch as its effects are homogeneous. All these harmonizing
influences are equally true of the painting; and though we have no
longer the homogeneous effect of the camera, we have the homogeneous
effect of one mind, viz., the mind of the artist.

Thus having disproved the supposed poetical obstacles to the
rendering of real life or nature in its own real garb and time, as
faithfully as Art can render it, nothing need be said to answer the
advantages of the antique or mediaeval rendering; since t