disappointed and disgusted with the deception; whilst in respect to a
work of genuine imitation you begin with an acknowledged total
difference, and then every touch of nature gives you the pleasure of an
approximation to truth.'

In this exposition there must be some oversight on the part of
Coleridge. He tells us in the beginning that, if there be 'likeness to
nature without any check of difference, the result is disgusting.' But
the case of the wax-work, which is meant to illustrate this proposition,
does not at all conform to the conditions; the result is disgusting
certainly, but not from any want of difference to control the sameness,
for, on the contrary, the difference is confessedly too revolting; and
apparently the distinction between the two cases described is simply
this--that in the illegitimate case of the wax-work the likeness comes
first and the unlikeness last, whereas in the other case this order is
reversed. But that distinction will neither account _in fact_ for the
difference of effect; nor, if it _did_, would it account upon any reason
or ground suggested by Coleridge for such a difference. Let us consider
this case of wax-work a little more vigilantly, and then perhaps we may
find out both why it is that some men unaffectedly _are_ disgusted by
wax-work; and secondly, why it is that, if trained on just principles of
reflective taste, all men _would_ be so affected.

As a matter not altogether without importance, we may note that even the
frailty of the material operates to some extent in disgusting us with
wax-work. A higher temperature of the atmosphere, it strikes us too
forcibly, would dispose the waxen figures to melt; and in colder seasons
the horny fist of a jolly boatswain would 'pun[5] them into shivers'
like so many ship-biscuits. The grandeur of permanence and durability
transfers itself or its expression from the material to the impression
of the artifice which moulds it, and crystallizes itself in the effect.
We see continually very ingenious imitations of objects cut out in paper
filigree; there have been people who showed as much of an artist's eye
in this sort of work, and of an artist's hand, as Miss Linwood of the
last generation in her exquisite needlework; in both cases a trick, a
_tour-de-main_, was raised into the dignity of a fine art; and yet,
because the slightness of the material too emphatically proclaims the
essential perishableness of the result, nobody views such mod