igion.

Having passed the first thrill and disappointment,--for pure art speaks
only to the pure by intuition or initiation, and I was yet a novice,--my
old newspaper curiosity revived to learn of the successful living rather
than of the grand dead.

Correspondents, like poets, are born, not made: the venerable
associations around me--monuments, cloisters, palaces, the homes and
graves of great men whom I revered, the aisles where every canvas bore a
spell name--could not wean me from that old, reportorial habit of asking
questions, peeping into private nooks, and making notes upon
contemporary things, just as I had done for three years, in cities, on
routes, on battle-fields. And as the old world seemed to me only a great
art museum, I longed to look behind the tapestry at the Ghobelin
weavers, pulling the beautiful threads.

"Where dwell these gay and happy students, who quit our hard, bright
skies, and land of angularities, to inhale the dews of these sedative
mosses, and, by attrition with masterpieces, glean something of the
spirit of the masters?"

Straightway the faery realm opened to me, and two months of Italian
rambling were spent in association with the folk I esteemed only less
than my own exemplars.

Art, in all ages, is the flowery way. No pursuit gives so great joy in
the achieving, none achieved yields higher meed of competence,
contentment, and repute. Its ambition is more genial and subdued than
that of literature, its rivalry more courteous and exalting; its daily
life should be pastoral and domestic, free from those feverish mutations
and adventures which cross the incipient author, and it is forever
surrounded by bright and beautiful objects which linger too long upon
the eye to stir the mind to more than emulation.

Is it harsh to say that artists have been too well rewarded, and
thinkers and writers too ill? Vasari dines at the ducal table, while
Galileo's pension is the rack; the mob which carries Cimabue's canvas in
triumph, drives Dante into exile; Rubens is a king's ambassador, and
Grotius is sent to jail; to Reynolds's levees, poor, bankrupt Goldsmith
steals like an unwelcome guest, and Apelles's gold is paid to him in
measures, while Homer, singing immortal lines, goes blind and begging.

Art students take rank in Italy among the best of travellers, but
Bohemianism in art is at one's peril. There are many wasted lives among
the clever fellows who go abroad ostensibly for study. I rec