"If a poem consist only of words and rhythms, how long do you think it
ought to live? And if a picture possess merely forms and colors, however
beautiful they may be, it deserves no more fame. And how much worse if
there be meaning, and it be base and unworthy!"

"Does he not put it well?" whispered Malcom to Bettina from his usual
seat between her and Margery. "I feel as if he were pouring new
thoughts into me."

"Now, the one thing I desire to impress upon you to-night," continued
Mr. Sumner, "is that these old masters of painting who lived in the
thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries had messages to give
their fellow-men. Their great endeavor was to interpret God's word to
them,--you know that in those days and in this land there was no Bible
open to the common people,--and what we must chiefly look for in their
pictures is to see whether or not they told the message as well as the
limitation of their art-language permitted.

"At first, no laws of perspective were known. None knew how to draw
anything correctly. No color-harmonies had been thought of. These men
must needs stammer when they tried to express themselves; but as much
greater as thought is than the mere expression of it so much greater are
many of their works, in the true sense, than the mass of pictures that
make up our exhibitions of the present day.

"Then, also, it is a source of the deepest interest to one who loves
this art to watch its growth in means of expression--its steady
development--until, finally, we find the noblest thoughts expressed in
perfect forms and coloring. This we can do here in Florence as nowhere