, in other words, between the benefits of the
perception of surface--a perception, when fine, perhaps none of the most
frequent--and those of the perception of very complex underlying
matters. If these latter had had, for me, to be taken into account, my
pages would not have been collected. At the time of their original
appearance the series of illustrations to which it had been their policy
to cling for countenance and company failed them, after all, at the last
moment, through a circumstance not now on record; and they had suddenly
to begin to live their little life without assistance. That they have
seemed able in any degree still to prolong even so modest a career might
perhaps have served as a reason for leaving them undisturbed. In fact,
however, I have too much appreciated--for any renewal of
inconsistency--the opportunity of granting them at last, in an
association with Mr. Pennell's admirable drawings, the benefit they have
always lacked. The little book thus goes forth finally as the
picture-book it was designed to be. Text and illustrations are,
altogether and alike, things of the play of eye and hand and
fancy--views, head-pieces, tail-pieces; through the artist's work,
doubtless, in a much higher degree than the author's._

_But these are words enough on a minor point. Many things come back to
me on reading my pages over--such a world of reflection and emotion as I
can neither leave unmentioned nor yet, in this place, weigh them down
with the full expression of. Difficult indeed would be any full
expression for one who, deeply devoted always to the revelations of
France, finds himself, late in life, making of the sentiment no more
substantial, no more direct record than this mere revival of an
accident. Not one of these small chapters but suggests to me a regret
that I might not, first or last, have gone farther, penetrated deeper,
spoken oftener--closed, in short, more intimately with the great general
subject; and I mean, of course, not in such a form as the present, but
in many another, possible and impossible. It all comes back, doubtless,
this vision of missed occasions and delays overdone, to the general
truth that the observer, the enjoyer, may, before he knows it, be
practically too far_ in _for all that free testimony and pleasant, easy
talk that are incidental to the earlier or more detached stages of a
relation. There are relations that soon get beyond all merely showy
appearances of value for us