is only you may practically
ascertain, as surely as that a flower will die if you cut its root away,
that you cannot alter a single touch in Gainsborough's work without
injury to the whole. Half a dozen spots, more or less, in the printed
gowns of these other children whom I first showed you, will not make the
smallest difference to them; nor a lock or two more or less in their
hair, nor a dimple or two more or less in their cheeks. But if you alter
one wave of the hair of Gainsborough's girl, the child is gone. Yet the
art is so subtle, that I do not expect you to believe this. It looks so
instinctive, so easy, so 'chanceux,'--the French word is better than
ours. Yes, and in their more accurate sense, also, 'Il a de la chance.'
A stronger Designer than he was with him. He could not tell you himself
how the thing was done.

145. I proceed to take a more definite instance--this Greek head of the
Lacinian Juno. The design or appointing of the forms now entirely
prevails over the resemblance to Nature. No real hair could ever be
drifted into these wild lines, which mean the wrath of the Adriatic
winds round the Cape of Storms.

And yet, whether this be uglier or prettier than Gainsborough's
child--(and you know already what I think about it, that no Greek
goddess was ever half so pretty as an English girl, of pure clay and
temper,)--uglier or prettier, it is more dignified and impressive. It at
least belongs to the domain of a lordlier, more majestic, more guiding
and ordaining art.

146. I will go back another five hundred years, and place an Egyptian
beside the Greek divinity. The resemblance to Nature is now all but
lost, the ruling law has become all. The lines are reduced to an easily
counted number, and their arrangement is little more than a decorative
sequence of pleasant curves cut in porphyry,--in the upper part of
their contour following the outline of a woman's face in profile,
over-crested by that of a hawk, on a kind of pedestal. But that the
sign-engraver meant by his hawk, Immortality, and by her pedestal, the
House or Tavern of Truth, is of little importance now to the passing
traveler, not yet preparing to take the sarcophagus for his place of
rest.

147. How many questions are suggested to us by these transitions! Is
beauty contrary to law, and grace attainable only through license? What
we gain in language, shall we lose in thought? and in what we add of
labor, more and more forget its ends?

Not