efore the pictures,
under pretence that the dust would tarnish their hues or the light dim
them. It was enough. Her visitors felt that the massive folds of the
silk must never be withdrawn nor the portraits mentioned in her
presence.

Time wore on, and the painter came again. He had been far enough to
the north to see the silver cascade of the Crystal Hills, and to look
over the vast round of cloud and forest from the summit of New
England's loftiest mountain. But he did not profane that scene by the
mockery of his art. He had also lain in a canoe on the bosom of Lake
George, making his soul the mirror of its loveliness and grandeur till
not a picture in the Vatican was more vivid than his recollection. He
had gone with the Indian hunters to Niagara, and there, again, had
flung his hopeless pencil down the precipice, feeling that he could as
soon paint the roar as aught else that goes to make up the wondrous
cataract. In truth, it was seldom his impulse to copy natural scenery
except as a framework for the delineations of the human form and face
instinct with thought, passion or suffering. With store of such his
adventurous ramble had enriched him. The stern dignity of Indian
chiefs, the dusky loveliness of Indian girls, the domestic life of
wigwams, the stealthy march, the battle beneath gloomy pine trees, the
frontier fortress with its garrison, the anomaly of the old French
partisan bred in courts, but grown gray in shaggy deserts,--such were
the scenes and portraits that he had sketched. The glow of perilous
moments, flashes of wild feeling, struggles of fierce power, love,
hate, grief, frenzy--in a word, all the worn-out heart of the old
earth--had been revealed to him under a new form. His portfolio was
filled with graphic illustrations of the volume of his memory which
genius would transmute into its own substance and imbue with
immortality. He felt that the deep wisdom in his art which he had
sought so far was found.

But amid stern or lovely nature, in the perils of the forest or its
overwhelming peacefulness, still there had been two phantoms, the
companions of his way. Like all other men around whom an engrossing
purpose wreathes itself, he was insulated from the mass of humankind.
He had no aim, no pleasure, no sympathies, but what were ultimately
connected with his art. Though gentle in manner and upright in intent
and action, he did not possess kindly feelings; his heart was cold: no
living creature cou