nus of Titian outweighs a whole Olympus full of spiritual
motives, such as swarm about like ants over your big pound-cake of an
allegorical mountain. Yes, we are old antipodes, my dear godfather;
which fact, by-the-way, does not lessen our friendship. On the
contrary, when I see how you and your creations are losing flesh
through pure intellect, I feel a hearty compassion mingled with my
esteem. You should try a milk-cure, my good godfather, at the full
breasts of our old mother Nature; you should follow the flesh for a
year or so, instead of high ideas--"

"It is not every tree that has its bark full grown," interposed Kohle,
meekly.

"True. But a tree that has no bark at all!--and, you see, that's just
how your whole style appears to me, you mighty disciple of Cornelius!
We see the complicated structure of your thoughts, we see how the sap
of your ideas circulates through it; all of which is very remarkable
and edifying, but anything rather than artistic. For ought not true art
to work upon us like a higher Nature, without putting forth much
ingenuity and subtilty, without all that complication of poetical
affinities and philosophical _finesse_? No, it should be simple and
plain, but purified by the flame of genius from all weakness, all
defects, and every kind of wretchedness. For instance, in the
contemplation of a beautiful woman, lying there so quietly, or of a
stately senator, or of an 'Adoration of the Kings,' how much does one
think about the ingenuity of the thing? Either it conveys no meaning,
or an incomprehensible one, or even an unprofitable one. And yet it
charms us, even across the whole width of the hall, merely by its
_silhouette_, or its wealth of color, or its simple and majestic
sensuous beauty, such as we seldom or never find in Nature without some
vulgar adjunct. On the other hand, take a poem in picture like the one
before us--I invariably find myself searching at the foot of the frame
to see whether the draughtsman has not added some notes that may serve
to explain the text. A printed paper answers the whole purpose quite as
well, something entitled 'The picture and its description;' and the
dear Philistine who talks about the 'arts of culture'--because he
thinks it is with his own special culture that they have to do--is only
too happy if he can imagine that he is going through some connected
process of thought while he looks at it. But _I_ say, long live the art
that leaves no room for thoug