ing over with
frippery,--olla podrida cropping out everywhere. It confused you. It
distracted you. It wearied you. You sighed for somewhat simple,
quiet, restful. The pictures were pronounced poor. I don't know
whether they were or not. I never can tell a picture as a cook tells
her mince-pie meat, by tasting it. One picture is a revealer and one
is a daub; but they are alike to me at first glance. For a picture has
an individuality all its own. You must woo it with tender ardor, or it
will not yield up its heart. The chance look sees only color and
contour; but as you gaze the color glows, the contour throbs, the
hidden soul heaves the inert canvas with the solemn palpitations of
life. Art is dead no longer, but informed with divine vitality. There
is no picture but Hope crowned and radiant, or pale and patient Sorrow,
or the tender sanctity of Love. The landscape of the artist is neither
painting nor nature, but summer fields and rosy sunsets over-flooded
with his own inward light. Only from her Heaven-anointed monarch, man,
can Nature receive her knightly accolade. And shall one detect the
false or recognize the true by the minute-hand? I suppose so, since
some do. But I cannot. People who live among the divinities may know
the goddess, for all her Spartan arms, her naked knee, and knotted
robe; but I, earth-born among earth-born, must needs behold the auroral
blush, the gliding gait, the flowing vestment, and the divine odor of
her purple hair.

In the vestibule of the French Cathedral, I believe it is, you will
behold a heart-rending sight in a glass case, namely, a group of
children, babies in long clothes and upwards, in a dreadful state of
being devoured by cotton-flannel pigs. Their poor little white frocks
are stained with blood, and they are knocked about piteously in various
stages of mutilation. A label in front informs you that certain
innocents in certain localities are subject to this shocking treatment;
and you are earnestly conjured to drop your penny or your pound into
the box, to rescue them from a fate so terrible. You must be a
cannibal if you can withstand this appeal. Suffering that you only
hear of, you can forget, but suffering going on right under your eyes
is not so easily disposed of.

Leaving the pigs and papooses, we will go to--which of the nunneries?
The Gray? Yes. But when you come home, everybody will tell you that
you ought to have visited the Black Nunnery.