shock drive, as it were, every other thought from the
mind: the terrible vision now seizes the imagination, filling it with
sound and motion: we see the clouds fly, the furious waves one upon
another dashing in conflict, and rolling, as if in wrath, towards the
devoted ship: the wind blows from the canvas; we hear it roar through
her shrouds; her masts bend like twigs, and her last forlorn hope,
the close-reefed foresail, streams like a tattered flag: a terrible
fascination still constrains us to look, and a dim, rocky shore looms
on her lee: then comes the dreadful cry of "Breakers ahead!" the crew
stand appalled, and the master's trumpet is soundless at his lips.
This is the uproar of nature, and we _feel_ it to be _true_;
for here every line, every touch, has a meaning. The ragged clouds,
the huddled waves, the prostrate ship, though forced by contrast
into the sharpest angles, all agree, opposed as they seem,--evolving
harmony out of apparent discord. And this is Genius, which no
criticism can ever disprove.

But all great names, it is said, must have their shadows. In our Art
they have many shadows, or rather I should say, reflections; which
are more or less distinct according to their proximity to the living
originals, and, like the images in opposite mirrors, becoming
themselves reflected and re-reflected with a kind of battledoor
alternation, grow dimmer and dimmer till they vanish from mere
distance.

Thus have the great schools of Italy, Flanders, and Holland lived and
walked after death, till even their ghosts have become familiar to us.

We would not, however, be understood as asserting that we receive
pleasure only from original works: this would be contradicting
the general experience. We admit, on the contrary, that there are
hundreds, nay, thousands, of pictures having no pretensions to
originality of any kind, which still afford pleasure; as, indeed,
do many things out of the Art, which we know to be second-hand, or
imperfect, and even trifling. Thus grace of manner, for instance,
though wholly unaided by a single definite quality, will often delight
us, and a ready elocution, with scarce a particle of sense, make
commonplace agreeable; and it seems to be, that the pain of mental
inertness renders action so desirable, that the mind instinctively
surrounds itself with myriads of objects, having little to recommend
them but the property of keeping it from stagnating. And we are
far from denying a cert