y, Scyllas with scales of pearl; infinitely
worthless toil, infinitely witless wickedness; pleasure satiated into
idiocy, passion provoked into madness, no object of thought, or sight,
or fancy, but horror, mutilation, distortion, corruption, agony of war,
insolence of disgrace, and misery of Death.

It is true that the ease with which a serpent, or something that will be
understood for one, can be chased or wrought in metal, and the small
workmanly skill required to image a satyr's hoof and horns, as compared
to that needed for a human foot or forehead, have greatly influenced the
choice of subject by incompetent smiths; and in like manner, the
prevalence of such vicious or ugly story in the mass of modern
literature is not so much a sign of the lasciviousness of the age, as of
its stupidity, though each react on the other, and the vapor of the
sulphurous pool becomes at last so diffused in the atmosphere of our
cities, that whom it cannot corrupt, it will at least stultify.

103. Yesterday, the last of August, came to me from the Fine Art
Society, a series of twenty black and white scrabbles[99] of which I am
informed in an eloquent preface that the author was a Michael Angelo of
the glebe, and that his shepherds and his herdswomen are akin in dignity
and grandeur to the prophets and Sibyls of the Sistine.

Glancing through the series of these stupendous productions, I find one
peculiarly characteristic and expressive of modern picture-making and
novel-writing,--called "Hauling" or more definitely "Paysan rentrant du
Fumier," which represents a man's back, or at least the back of his
waistcoat and trousers, and hat, in full light, and a small blot where
his face should be, with a small scratch where its nose should be,
elongated into one representing a chink of timber in the background.

Examining the volume farther, in the hope of discovering some trace of
reasonable motive for the publication of these works by the Society, I
perceive that this Michael Angelo of the glebe had indeed natural
faculty of no mean order in him, and that the woeful history of his life
contains very curious lessons respecting the modern conditions of
Imagination and Art.

104. I find in the first place, that he was a Breton peasant; his
grandmother's godson, baptized in good hope, and christened Jean, after
his father, and Francois after the Saint of Assisi, his godmother's
patron. It was under her care and guidance and those of his unc