xhaust worlds" and
"imagine new." It takes for an imperial use the contributions the eye
is ever offering, but converts them into riches of its own. It will
not be confined by space, nor limited by time, but gathers from the
wide world, and even beyond its range. Thus, in the simple yet
creative enthusiasm of his passion, did Burns gather, at one moment,
the flowers of all seasons, and all

"To pu' a posy for his ain sweet May;"

and cold would be the criticism that would stop to note the
impossibility; yet was it a great truth, the garden was his own heart,
and his every wish a new flower. Here they all were.

It is the misfortune of art that this great power of the mind over
materials is not sufficiently and practically admitted. In colouring
we seem to have altogether abandoned the idea of invention. We go
quite contrary to the practice of those good architects of other ages,
who spoke and painted by their art; who invented because they felt the
religious awe, that solemn _chiaro-scuro_--and the painted windows,
not gorgeous and flaring with large masses of unmixed colours, (as are
the unmeaning windows the modern Templars have put up in their
ill-painted church, in which, too, the somewhat tame and dead
Byzantine colouring of the walls agrees not with the overpowering
glass of the windows;) these old architects, I say, affecting the "dim
religious light," and knowing the illumination and brilliancy of their
material, took colours without a name, for the most part neither raw
reds, nor blues, nor yellows, but mixed, and many of a low and subdued
tone; and so, when these windows represented subjects, the designs had
a suitable quaintness, a formality, a saint-like immutability, a holy
repose; and the very strong colours were sparingly used, and in very
small spaces; and the divisions of the lead that fastened the parts
together had doubtless, in the calculation of the architect, their
subduing effect. Religious poetry--the highest poetry, consequently
the highest truth--was here. There are who might prefer the modern
conventicle, with its glare of sunshine, and white glass, and bare,
unadorned, white-washed walls, and justify their want of taste by a
reference to nature, whose light and atmosphere, they will tell you,
they are admitting. And like this is the argument of many an artist,
when he would cover the poverty of his invention under the plea of his
imitation of nature--a plea, too, urged in ignorance of