d
good sense enough to see the difference in the individual instance;
but a person better acquainted with Titian's manner and with art in
general--that is, of a more cultivated and refined taste--would know
that it was a bad print, without having any immediate model to compare
it with. He would perceive with a glance of the eye, with a sort
of instinctive feeling, that it was hard, and without that bland,
expansive, and nameless expression which always distinguished Titian's
most famous works. Any one who is accustomed to a head in a picture can
never reconcile himself to a print from it; but to the ignorant they are
both the same. To a vulgar eye there is no difference between a Guido
and a daub--between a penny print, or the vilest scrawl, and the most
finished performance. In other words, all that excellence which lies
between these two extremes,--all, at least, that marks the excess above
mediocrity,--all that constitutes true beauty, harmony, refinement,
grandeur, is lost upon the common observer. But it is from this point
that the delight, the glowing raptures of the true adept commence. An
uninformed spectator may like an ordinary drawing better than the
ablest connoisseur; but for that very reason he cannot like the highest
specimens of art so well. The refinements not only of execution but of
truth and nature are inaccessible to unpractised eyes. The exquisite
gradations in a sky of Claude's are not perceived by such persons, and
consequently the harmony cannot be felt. Where there is no conscious
apprehension, there can be no conscious pleasure. Wonder at the first
sights of works of art may be the effect of ignorance and novelty; but
real admiration and permanent delight in them are the growth of taste
and knowledge. 'I would not wish to have your eyes,' said a good-natured
man to a critic who was finding fault with a picture in which the other
saw no blemish. Why so? The idea which prevented him from admiring this
inferior production was a higher idea of truth and beauty which was
ever present with him, and a continual source of pleasing and lofty
contemplations. It may be different in a taste for outward luxuries and
the privations of mere sense; but the idea of perfection, which acts
as an intellectual foil, is always an addition, a support, and a proud
consolation!

Richardson, in his _Essays_, which ought to be better known, has left
some striking examples of the felicity and infelicity of artists, both