rtion destroy;
your very death, as the being who called it into life, only stamps it
with a holier value."

"And so then," said Clarence, "you would seriously relinquish, for the
mute copy of the mere features, those affections which no painting can
express?"

"Ay," said the painter, with an energy unusual to his quiet manner, and
slightly wandering in his answer from Clarence's remark, "ay, one serves
not two mistresses: mine is the glory of my art. Oh! what are the
cold shapes of this tame earth, where the footsteps of the gods have
vanished, and left no trace, the blemished forms, the debased brows, and
the jarring features, to the glorious and gorgeous images which I can
conjure up at my will? Away with human beauties, to him whose nights
are haunted with the forms of angels and wanderers from the stars, the
spirits of all things lovely and exalted in the universe: the universe
as it was; when to fountain, and stream, and hill, and to every tree
which the summer clothed, was allotted the vigil of a Nymph! when
through glade, and by waterfall, at glossy noontide, or under the silver
stars, the forms of Godhead and Spirit were seen to walk; when the
sculptor modelled his mighty work from the beauty and strength of
Heaven, and the poet lay in the shade to dream of the Naiad and the
Faun, and the Olympian dwellers whom he walked in rapture to behold;
and the painter, not as now, shaping from shadow and in solitude the dim
glories of his heart, caught at once his inspiration from the glow of
earth and its living wanderers, and, lo, the canvas breathed! Oh! what
are the dull realities and the abortive offspring of this altered and
humbled world--the world of meaner and dwarfish men--to him whose realms
are peopled with visions like these?"

And the artist, whose ardour, long excited and pent within, had at last
thus audibly, and to Clarence's astonishment, burst forth, paused, as
if to recall himself from his wandering enthusiasm. Such moments of
excitement were indeed rare with him, except when utterly alone, and
even then, were almost invariably followed by that depression of spirit
by which all over-wrought susceptibility is succeeded. A change came
over his face, like that of a cloud when the sunbeam which gilded leaves
it; and, with a slight sigh and a subdued tone, he resumed,--

"So, my friend, you see what our art can do even for the humblest
professor, when I, a poor, friendless, patronless artist, can thus