ordains for creatures of her kind.

We know not whether the result of her Italian studies, so far as it
could yet be seen, will be accepted as a good or desirable one. Certain
it is, that since her arrival in the pictorial land, Hilda seemed to
have entirely lost the impulse of original design, which brought her
thither. No doubt the girl's early dreams had been of sending forms and
hues of beauty into the visible world out of her own mind; of compelling
scenes of poetry and history to live before men's eyes, through
conceptions and by methods individual to herself. But more and more, as
she grew familiar with the miracles of art that enrich so many galleries
in Rome, Hilda had ceased to consider herself as an original artist. No,
wonder that this change should have befallen her. She was endowed with
a deep and sensitive faculty of appreciation; she had the gift of
discerning and worshipping excellence in a most unusual measure. No
other person, it is probable, recognized so adequately, and enjoyed with
such deep delight, the pictorial wonders that were here displayed. She
saw no, not saw, but felt through and through a picture; she bestowed
upon it all the warmth and richness of a woman's sympathy; not by any
intellectual effort, but by this strength of heart, and this guiding
light of sympathy, she went straight to the central point, in which the
master had conceived his work. Thus she viewed it, as it were, with his
own eyes, and hence her comprehension of any picture that interested her
was perfect.

This power and depth of appreciation depended partly upon Hilda's
physical organization, which was at once healthful and exquisitely
delicate; and, connected with this advantage, she had a command of
hand, a nicety and force of touch, which is an endowment separate from
pictorial genius, though indispensable to its exercise.