forest without a gleam of light under its
farthest branches, nor ventures out in rain, unless he may somewhere
pierce to a better promise in the distance, or cling to some closing gap
of variable blue above;--escape, hope, infinity, by whatever
conventionalism sought, the desire is the same in all, the instinct
constant, it is no mere point of light that is wanted in the etching of
Rembrandt above instanced, a gleam of armor or fold of temple curtain
would have been utterly valueless, neither is it liberty, for though we
cut down hedges and level hills, and give what waste and plain we
choose, on the right hand and the left, it is all comfortless and
undesired, so long as we cleave not a way of escape forward; and however
narrow and thorny and difficult the nearer path, it matters not, so only
that the clouds open for us at its close. Neither will any amount of
beauty in nearer form, make us content to stay with it, so long as we
are shut down to that alone, nor is any form so cold or so hurtful but
that we may look upon it with kindness, so only that it rise against the
infinite hope of light beyond. The reader can follow out the analogies
of this unassisted.

Sec. 9. How the dignity of treatment is proportioned to the expression of
infinity.

But although this narrow portal of escape be all that is absolutely
necessary, I think that the dignity of the painting increases with the
extent and amount of the expression. With the earlier and mightier
painters of Italy, the practice is commonly to leave their distance of
pure and open sky, of such simplicity, that it in nowise shall interfere
with or draw the attention from the interest of the figures, and of such
purity, that especially towards the horizon, it shall be in the highest
degree expressive of the infinite space of heaven. I do not mean to say
that they did this with any occult or metaphysical motives. They did it,
I think, with the child-like, unpretending simplicity of all earnest
men; they did what they loved and felt; they sought what the heart
naturally seeks, and gave what it most gratefully receives; and I look
to them as in all points of principle (not, observe, of knowledge or
empirical attainment) as the most irrefragable authorities, precisely on
account of the child-like innocence, which never deemed itself
authoritative, but acted upon desire, and not upon dicta, and sought for
sympathy, not for admiration.

Sec. 10. Examples among the