self and the present. For me, there are
neither letters nor books, and the very roads are closed. To arise in
the morning and know that no tidings, whether of joy or sadness, can
come from without; to have nothing to fall back upon but one's self and
the undying laws of nature: he who can lead such a life, self-contained
and yet contented, must be like the child illuminated by its own
radiance--the child painted by Correggio.

Hammer and axe, file and saw, all that once seemed to me instruments of
torture for poor enslaved humanity, I have found the instruments of
deliverance. They banish the demons that dwell within us. Where these
tools are wielded by industrious hands, evil spirits cannot tarry. The
redeemer who will consecrate labor, is yet to come.

*

At last, I find myself obliged to be content without doing anything in
the way of art.

Although wood is useful, and in many respects indispensable, it cannot
be applied to serve beauty apart from usefulness. The substance with
which my art, or rather trade, employs itself, is unequal to the
demands of art, except for decorative purposes. Bronze and marble speak
a universal language, but a wooden image always retains a provincial
character. It addresses us in dialect, as it were, and never attains to
the perfect expression of the ideal. We can make wooden effigies of
animals or plants with which we are familiar, and can even carve angels
in _relievo_, but to make a life-size bust, or human figure, of wood,
were entirely out of the question.

Wood carving is only the beginning of art, and is faltering, or, at
best, monotonous, in its expression.

What has once existed as an organism cannot be transformed into a new
organic structure. Stone and bronze, however, do not acquire organic
shape, except at the hands of man.

If a Greek of the days of Pericles were to behold our images of the
saints, how he would shudder at our barbarism.

*

This journal is a comfort to me. I can express myself in my own
language and feel perfectly at home. I cannot, at times, avoid
regarding my constant use of the dialect of this region as a sort of
affectation. Everything that I say appears to me distorted. I feel as
if wearing a strange costume, and as if my soul were concealed behind
an iron mask. Although I am a child of the mountains, the words I utter
seem strange and foreign. A dialect proves poverty of