urse; the
scenery within excursion-distance from his home was interesting and even
inspiring, yet not so splendid as to be overwhelming. We know from his
conversations that he was quite aware of the value of those little
centres of culture to Germany, and yet in one place he speaks of
Beranger in the tone which seems to imply an appreciation of the larger
life of Paris. "Fancy," he says, "this same Beranger away from Paris,
and the influence and opportunities of a world-city, born as the son of
a poor tailor, at Jena or Weimar; let him run his wretched career in
either of the two small cities, and see what fruit would have grown on
such a soil and in such an atmosphere."

We cannot too frequently be reminded that we are nothing of ourselves,
and by ourselves, and are only something by the place we hold in the
intellectual chain of humanity by which electricity is conveyed to us
and through us--to be increased in the transmission if we have great
natural power and are favorably situated, but not otherwise. A child is
born to the Vecelli family at Cadore, and when it is nine years old is
taken to Venice and placed under the tuition of Sebastian Zuccato.
Afterwards he goes to Bellini's school, and there gets acquainted with
another student, one year his junior, whose name is Barbarelli. They
live together and work together in Venice; then young Barbarelli (known
to posterity as Giorgione), after putting on certain spaces of wall and
squares of canvas such color as the world had never before seen, dies in
his early manhood and leaves Vecellio, whom we call Titian, to work on
there in Venice till the plague stays his hand in his hundredth year.
The genius came into the world, but all the possibilities of his
development depended upon the place and the time. He came exactly in the
right place and precisely at the right time. To be born not far from
Venice in the days of Bellini, to be taken there at nine years old, to
have Giorgione for one's comrade, all this was as fortunate for an
artistic career as the circumstances of Alexander of Macedon were for a
career of conquest.

LETTER III.

TO AN ARTIST WHO WAS FITTING UP A MAGNIFICENT NEW STUDIO.

Pleasure of planning a studio--Opinions of an outsider--Saint
Bernard--Father Ravignan--Goethe's study and bed-room--Gustave Dore's
studio--Leslie's painting-room--Turner's opinion--Habits of Scott and
Dickens--Extremes good--Vulgar mediocrity not so good--Value of
be