le weak beverage having
mounted into their heads."

"You would not dispute," cried the young painter, "and you do more, you
are bitter. Passion at all events takes from a man his freedom of
judgment. Whether the party for which you contend with such weapons
will gain by it, the future must decide."

Sophia had the malice to cast an encouraging look at the young man.
Walther was by this time uneasy; but Erich joined in the conversation
as mediator, and said, "Whenever a violent controversy stirs itself in
the age, it is a sign that some truth lies midway between the parties,
of which a contemporary, if he would be impartial, ought not to be
entirely ignorant. The arts had long withdrawn from the business of
life, and had become a mere article of luxury; it was in the mean time
forgotten that they had ever been connected with the church and the
world, with devotion and the spirit of enterprise, and all that was
left to produce them was cold connoisseurship, partiality for petty
details and the common-place natural, and an artificial enthusiasm. I
well remember the time when the finest works of a Leonardo were pointed
out only as remarkable and singular antiquities; Raphael himself was
admired only with a qualifying criticism, and people shrugged their
shoulders at still more ancient great masters, and never viewed the
paintings of the earlier German and Flemish artists without laughter.
This barbarism of ignorance at least is now gone by."

"If only no new and worse barbarism had arisen to supply its place!"
cried Eulenboeck, purpling deep with wine, as he threw a fiery glance at
the stranger. "I never cease to regret that in our days the language of
a genuine connoisseur is scarcely any longer to be heard; enthusiasm
drowns the voice of judgment; and yet nothing is so instructive for the
artist as a conversation with a genuine lover of the arts, to inform
and animate him, though it is an advantage which for years together he
may not be fortunate enough to enjoy."

The stranger, who seemed to be losing his temper and growing violent,
became after these words again cheerful and mild. "Artists and lovers
of art," he answered, "ought always to court each other's society, in
order to be constantly learning of one another. So it was in former
times; and this was another cause of the flourishing state of painting.
The imagination of every inventor is confined, and flags if it be not
refreshed and enriched from without, and