ist said, "I
say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of
these." I see and note the aureole on the dandelion, and the sun which,
far away, beyond the stretching country, spends his glory on the clouds.
I see just as much in the flat plain; in the horses steaming as they
toil; and then in a stony place I see a man quite exhausted, whose gasps
have been audible since morning, who tries to draw himself up for a
moment to take breath. The drama is surrounded by splendours. This is no
invention of mine; and it is long since that expression "the cry of the
earth" was discovered. My critics are men of learning and taste, I
imagine; but I cannot put myself into their skins, and since I have
never in my life seen anything but the fields, I try to tell, as best I
can, what I have seen and experienced as I worked.

_Millet._

XXXVI

One of the hardest things in the world is to determine how much realism
is allowable in any particular picture. It is of so many different kinds
too. For instance, I want a shield or a crown or a pair of wings or what
not, to look real. Well, I make what I want, or a model of it, and then
make studies from that. So that what eventually gets on to the canvas is
a reflection of a reflection of something purely imaginary. The three
Magi never had crowns like that, supposing them to have had crowns at
all, but the effect is realistic because the crown from which the
studies were made is real--and so on.

_Burne-Jones._

XXXVII

Do you understand now that all my intelligence rejects is in immediate
relation to all my heart aspires to, and that the spectacle of human
blunders and human vileness is an equally powerful motive for action in
the exercise of art with springs of tranquil contemplation that I have
felt within me since I was a child?

We have come far, I hope, from the shadowy foliage crowning the humble
roof of the primitive human dwelling, far from the warbling of the birds
that brood among the branches; far from all these tender things. We left
them, notwithstanding, the other day; and even if we had stayed, do you
think we should have continued to enjoy them?

Believe me, everything comes from the universal; we must embrace to give
life.

Whatever interest one may get from material offered by a period,
religion, manners, history, &c., in representing a particular type, it
will avail nothing without an understanding of the universal agency of
atmospher