illiant freedom, which looked as if they
etched with very energetic waters indeed--quite waters of life (it does
not look so well, written in French). So we will take, with the reader's
permission, for text next month, "Rembrandt, and strong waters."

FOOTNOTES:

[69] _Art Journal_, vol. iv., pp. 129-30. May 1865.--ED.

[70] I have received some interesting private letters, but cannot make
use of them at present, because they enter into general discussion
instead of answering the specific question I asked, respecting the power
of the black line; and I must observe to correspondents that in future
their letters should be addressed to the Editor of this Journal, not to
me; as I do not wish to incur the responsibility of selection.

CHAPTER V.[71]

74. The work I have to do in this paper ought, rightly, to have been
thrown into the form of an appendix to the last chapter; for it is no
link of the cestus of Aglaia we have to examine, but one of the crests
of canine passion in the cestus of Scylla. Nevertheless, the girdle of
the Grace cannot be discerned in the full brightness of it, but by
comparing it with the dark torment of that other; and (in what place or
form matters little) the work has to be done.

"Rembrandt Van Rhyn"--it is said, in the last edition of a very valuable
work[72] (for which, nevertheless, I could wish that greater lightness
in the hand should be obtained by the publication of its information in
one volume, and its criticism in another)--was "the most attractive and
original of painters." It may be so; but there are attractions, and
attractions. The sun attracts the planets--and a candle, night-moths;
the one with perhaps somewhat of benefit to the planets;--but with what
benefit the other to the moths, one would be glad to learn from those
desert flies, of whom, one company having extinguished Mr. Kinglake's
candle with their bodies, the remainder, "who had failed in obtaining
this martyrdom, became suddenly serious, and clung despondingly to the
canvas."

75. Also, there are originalities, and originalities. To invent a new
thing, which is also a precious thing; to be struck by a divinely-guided
Rod, and become a sudden fountain of life to thirsty multitudes--this is
enviable. But to be distinct of men in an original Sin; elect for the
initial letter of a Lie; the first apparent spot of an unknown plague; a
Root of bitterness, and the first-born worm of a company, studying an
origin