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characteristics of the most elaborated painters is soon acquired, and
then comes the difficulty of judging honestly of the effect upon one's
self of a picture which bears so great a name. Yet all Tintoretto's
paintings are no more equal than Sir Walter Scott's novels or Byron's
poems: Titian trips as Homer nods. Of course we cannot expect to
distinguish between the good and the bad of a great master, but there
is no reason for our admiring everything from his hand. A great step
is gained when we know whether we are pleased or not.

All our familiarity with the composition of great pictures does not
prevent our becoming bewildered by their size and color on first
beholding them. The number of canvases and conflict of hues in a
gallery confuse the eye and irritate the nerves. One looks down the
interminable corridors, the immense halls, the endless suites of
rooms, with growing dismay: as one succeeds another, and the inmost
chamber seems farther off as we advance, the nightmare sense of
something which is impossible, yet must be done, begins to weigh upon
us. And this goes on day after day with a protracted strain upon the
limbs, the senses and the brain, until real injury sometimes ensues.
After traversing almost without a pause the great art-palaces of
Munich, Brussels, Antwerp, The Hague and all the minor ones on the
route, on reaching Amsterdam, with its inexhaustible picture-shows, I
had got to the point where I sat down amidst the Rembrandts, forced to
declare that I would rather look at so much wall-paper of a good
pattern. This is utter folly. One cardinal rule in seeking either
pleasure or profit is not to tire one's self. When time is limited and
the opportunity may never recur, the temptation is almost
overpowering: this is our only chance--we must not lose it. But it
_is_ lost if we overtask the perceptions and carry away no idea with
us: there is no gain, and positive harm. No one new to galleries
should look at pictures for more than an hour together, and I think
that one who knows and cares much about them will not wish to do so
for more than double that time. We learn by degrees to go through a
gallery much more rapidly than at first, for unless we have adopted
some plan of selection we begin by looking at every picture. After a
while we merely glance at the greater number, and get over the ground
much more quickly, though we spend a long time before the rest. If in
this cursory survey a picture strik