e well-known bird--in the finely drawn leafage of
the discriminated flower. As we advance in judgment, we scorn such
detail altogether; we look for impetuosity of execution, and breadth of
effect. But, perfected in judgment, we return in a great measure to our
early feelings, and thank Raffaelle for the shells upon his sacred
beach, and for the delicate stamens of the herbage beside his inspired
St. Catherine.[I]

Of those who take interest in art, nay, even of artists themselves,
there are an hundred in the middle stage of judgment, for one who is in
the last; and this not because they are destitute of the power to
discover, or the sensibility to enjoy the truth, but because the truth
bears so much semblance of error--the last stage of the journey to the
first,--that every feeling which guides to it is checked in its origin.
The rapid and powerful artist necessarily looks with such contempt on
those who seek minutiae of detail _rather_ than grandeur of impression,
that it is almost impossible for him to conceive of the great last step
in art, by which both become compatible. He has so often to dash the
delicacy out of the pupil's work, and to blot the details from his
encumbered canvas; so frequently to lament the loss of breadth and
unity, and so seldom to reprehend the imperfection of minutiae, that he
necessarily looks upon complete _parts_ as the very sign of error,
weakness, and ignorance. Thus, frequently to the latest period of his
life, he separates, like Sir Joshua, as chief enemies, the details and
the whole, which an artist cannot be great unless he reconciles; and
because details alone, and unreferred to a final purpose, are the sign
of a tyro's work, he loses sight of the remoter truth, that details
perfect in unity, and, contributing to a final purpose, are the sign of
the production of a consummate master.

It is not, therefore, detail sought for its own sake,--not the
calculable bricks of the Dutch house-painters, nor the numbered hairs
and mapped wrinkles of Denner, which constitute great art,--they are the
lowest and most contemptible art; but it is detail referred to a great
end,--sought for the sake of the inestimable beauty which exists in the
slightest and least of God's works, and treated in a manly, broad, and
impressive manner. There may be as much greatness of mind, as much
nobility of manner in a master's treatment of the smallest features, as
in his management of the most vast; and this gre