And the poet's song again
Passed like music through my brain;
Night interpreted to me
All its grace and mystery.




SOMETHING ABOUT PICTURES.


It is not surprising that pictures, with all their attraction for eye
and mind, are, to many honest and intelligent people, too much of a
riddle to be altogether pleasant. What with the oracular dicta of
self-constituted arbiters of taste, the discrepancies of popular writers
on Art, the jargon of connoisseurship, the vagaries of fashion, the
endless theories about color, style, chiaro 'scuro, composition, design,
imitation, nature, schools, etc., painting has become rather a subject
for the gratification of vanity and the exercise of pedantic dogmatism,
than a genuine source of enjoyment and culture, of sympathy and
satisfaction,--like music, literature, scenery, and other recognized
intellectual recreations. In these latter spheres it is not thought
presumptuous to assert and enjoy individual taste; the least independent
talkers will bravely advocate their favorite composer, describe the
landscape which has charmed or the book which has interested them; but
when a picture is the subject of discussion, few have the moral
courage to say what they think; there is a self-distrust of one's own
impressions and even convictions in regard to what is represented on
canvas, that never intervenes between thought and expression, where
ideas or sentiments are embodied in writing or in melody. Nor is this to