late swindling telegrams account for
the last year's cattle plague--which is a refutation of philosophy
falsely so called, and justifies the compensation to the farmers. My
own idea that a murrain will shortly break out in the commercial
class, and that the cause will subsequently disclose itself in the
ready sale of all rejected pictures, has been called an unsound use of
analogy; but there are minds that will not hesitate to rob even the
neglected painter of his solace. To my feeling there is great beauty
in the conception that some bad judge might give a high price for my
Berenice series, and that the men in the city would have already been
punished for my ill-merited luck.

Meanwhile I am consoling myself for your absence by finding my
advantage in it--shining like Hesperus when Hyperion has departed;
sitting with our Hebrew prophet, and making a study of his head, in
the hours when he used to be occupied with you--getting credit with
him as a learned young Gentile, who would have been a Jew if he could
--and agreeing with him in the general principle, that whatever is
best is for that reason Jewish. I never held it my _forte_ to be
a severe reasoner, but I can see that if whatever is best is A, and B
happens to be best, B must be A, however little you might have
expected it beforehand. On that principle I could see the force of a
pamphlet I once read to prove that all good art was Protestant.
However, our prophet is an uncommonly interesting sitter--a better
model than Rembrandt had for his Rabbi--and I never come away from him
without a new discovery. For one thing, it is a constant wonder to me
that, with all his fiery feeling for his race and their traditions, he
is no straight-laced Jew, spitting after the word Christian, and
enjoying the prospect that the Gentile mouth will water in vain for a
slice of the roasted Leviathan, while Israel will be sending up plates
for more, _ad libitum_, (You perceive that my studies had taught
me what to expect from the orthodox Jew.) I confess that I have always
held lightly by your account of Mordecai, as apologetic, and merely
part of your disposition to make an antedeluvian point of view lest
you should do injustice to the megatherium. But now I have given ear
to him in his proper person, I find him really a sort of
philosophical-allego