pleases to
consider it--world of ours. For some of us, who have no perception but
of solidity, are agreed to consider all that is not solid, or weighably
liquid, nothing. And others of us, who have also perception of the
spectral, are sometimes too much inclined to call what is no more than
solid, or weighably liquid, nothing. But the general reader may be at
least assured that it is not at all possible for the student to enter
into useful discussion concerning the qualities of art which takes on
itself to represent things as they are, unless he include in its
subjects the spectral, no less than the substantial, reality; and
understand what difference must be between the powers of veritable
representation, for the men whose models are of ponderable flesh, as for
instance, the "Sculptor's model," lately under debate in Liverpool,--and
the men whose models pause perhaps only for an instant--painted on the
immeasurable air,--forms which they themselves can but discern darkly,
and remember uncertainly, saying: "A vision passed before me, but I
could not discern the form thereof."

243. And the most curious, yet the most common, deficiency in the modern
contemplative mind, is its inability to comprehend that these phenomena
of true imagination are yet no less real, and often more vivid than
phenomena of matter. We continually hear artists blamed or praised for
having painted this or that (either of material or spectral kind),
without the slightest implied inquiry whether they _saw_ this, or that.
Whereas the quite primal difference between the first and second order
of artists, is that the first is indeed painting what he has seen; and
the second only what he would like to see! But as the one that can paint
what he would like, has therefore the power, if he chooses, of painting
more or less what also his public likes, he has a chance of being
received with sympathetic applause, on all hands, while the first, it
may be, meets only reproach for not having painted something more
agreeable. Thus Mr. Millais, going out at Tunbridge or Sevenoaks, sees a
blind vagrant led by an ugly child; and paints that highly objectionable
group, as they appeared to him. But your pliably minded painter gives
you a beautiful young lady guiding a sightless Belisarius (see the gift
by one of our most tasteful modistes to our National Gallery), and the
gratified public never troubles itself to ask whether these ethereal
mendicants were ever indeed