ng his
pleasure. At the end of the year it becomes a part of the decoration
of the wall. You perhaps feel that the frame needs retouching, and
that is all the impression it makes upon you, except as would an old
timepiece with the mainspring gone. The works are exquisite and the
enamelling charming, but it has been four o'clock for forty years.

In the library, however, hangs an etching which you often look at; in
fact, you never pass it without noticing it. Two figures, a
wheelbarrow, a spade, a stretch of country, a spire pencilled against
a low-tone sky; and yet, somehow, you hear the tolling of the bell and
the whispered prayer. Ah! but you say this has nothing to do with the
treatment; it is the subject. One moment. The missionary's story is as
full of pathos and of human suffering and courage as the "Angelus,"
and at first as profoundly stirs our sympathy; but, in one, Vibert has
monopolized the conversation; he has exhausted the subject; he has
told you everything he knows. Nothing has been omitted; nails,
monograms, and all; there is nothing left for you to supply--he is not
so complimentary. But Millet has taken you into his confidence. He
says: "Come, see what I once saw. Do you ever remember any such couple
working in the field?" And you immediately, and unconsciously to
yourself, remember just such a bent back and reverent, uncovered head.
Where, you cannot tell, for the picture comes to you out of the dim
lumber-room in your brain where you store your old memories and faint
impressions of bygone days and sad faces.

But if he added, "See, my peasant wears a woollen jacket trimmed with
worsted braid," your impression would immediately fade. You might
remember the jacket, but the braid, never. But for this it would have
been delightful for you, although unconsciously, to add your own sweet
memory to the picture.

Another impression choked to death with unnecessary realism.

But be you realist or impressionist, remember that a true work of art
is that which has pleased _the greatest number of people for the
longest period of time_; that the love of beauty indicates our highest
intellectual plane, and that if you will express to your fellow
sinners burdened with life's cares something of the enthusiasm of your
own life, and will assist them to see their mother earth through your
own eyes in constantly increasing beauty--you having by your art, in
your possession, the key to the cipher, and interpreting and