their part of the scheme of the human being, with those of the second
order, which wed the Intelligent part of the intellect and Resolute part
of the soul. But the reader must feel more and more, at every step, the
impossibility of classing the arts themselves, independently of the men
by whom they are practised; and how an art, low in itself, may be made
noble by the quantity of human strength and being which a great man will
pour into it; and an art, great in itself, be made mean by the meanness
of the mind occupied in it. I do not intend, when I call painting an art
of the first, and war an art of the second, order, to class Dutch
landscape painters with good soldiers; but I mean, that if from such a
man as Napoleon we were to take away the honor of all that he had done
in law and civil government, and to give him the reputation of his
soldiership only, his name would be less, if justly weighed, than that
of Buonarroti, himself a good soldier also, when need was. But I will
not endeavor to pursue the inquiry, for I believe that of all the arts
of the first order it would be found that all that a man has, or is, or
can be, he can fully express in them, and give to any of them, and find
it not enough.

15. INSTINCTIVE JUDGMENTS.

The same rapid judgment which I wish to enable the reader to form of
architecture, may in some sort also be formed of painting, owing to the
close connection between execution and expression in the latter; as
between structure and expression in the former. We ought to be able to
tell good painting by a side glance as we pass along a gallery; and,
until we can do so, we are not fit to pronounce judgment at all: not
that I class this easily visible excellence of painting with the great
expressional qualities which time and watchfulness only unfold. I have
again and again insisted on the supremacy of these last and shall
always continue to do so. But I perceive a tendency among some of the
more thoughtful critics of the day to forget that the business of a
painter is to _paint_, and so altogether to despise those men, Veronese
and Rubens for instance, who were painters, par excellence, and in whom
the expressional qualities are subordinate. Now it is well, when we have
strong moral or poetical feeling manifested in painting, to mark this as
the best part of the work; but it is not well to consider as a thing of
small account, the painter's language in which that feeling is conveyed,
for if