n the power
of reproducing what is thus modified consists the originating cause.

Let us turn now to an opposite example,--to a mere mechanical copy of
some natural object, where the marks in question are wholly wanting.
Will any one be truly affected by it? We think not; we do not say that
he will not praise it,--this he may do from various motives; but his
_feeling_--if we may so name the index of the law within--will
not be called forth to any spontaneous correspondence with the object
before him.

But why talk of feeling, says the pseudo-connoisseur, where we should
only, or at least first, bring knowledge? This is the common cant of
those who become critics for the sake of distinction. Let the Artist
avoid them, if he would not disfranchise himself in the suppression
of that uncompromising _test_ within him, which is the only sure
guide to the truth without.

It is a poor ambition to desire the office of a judge merely for
the sake of passing sentence. But such an ambition is not likely to
possess a person of true sensibility. There are some, however, in
whom there is no deficiency of sensibility, yet who, either from
self-distrust, or from some mistaken notion of Art, are easily
persuaded to give up a right feeling, in exchange for what they may
suppose to be knowledge,--the barren knowledge of faults; as if there
could be a human production without them! Nevertheless, there is
little to be apprehended from any conventional theory, by one who is
forewarned of its mere negative power,--that it can, at best, only
suppress feeling; for no one ever was, or ever can be, argued into
a real liking for what he has once felt to be false. But, where the
feeling is genuine, and not the mere reflex of a popular notion, so
far as it goes it must be true. Let no one, therefore, distrust it, to
take counsel of his head, when he finds himself standing before a work
of Art. Does he feel its truth? is the only question,--if, indeed, the
impertinence of the understanding should then propound one; which we
think it will not, where the feeling is powerful. To such a one, the
characteristic of Art upon which we are now discoursing will force
its way with the power of light; nor will he ever be in danger of
mistaking a mechanical copy for a living imitation.

But we sometimes hear of "faithful transcripts," nay, of fac-similes.
If by these be implied neither more nor less than exists in their
originals, they must still, in that cas