The walls of the principal rooms were embellished with pictures of
extraordinary merit, and in that high school of art which is so little
understood out of Italy. I was surprised to learn that they were all
from the hand of the owner. My evident admiration pleased my new friend,
and led to talk upon his part, which showed him no less elevated in his
theories of art than an adept in the practice. Without fatiguing
the reader with irrelevant criticism, it is necessary, perhaps, as
elucidating much of the design and character of the work which these
prefatory pages introduce, that I should briefly observe, that he
insisted as much upon the connection of the arts, as a distinguished
author has upon that of the sciences; that he held that in all works of
imagination, whether expressed by words or by colours, the artist of the
higher schools must make the broadest distinction between the real and
the true,--in other words, between the imitation of actual life, and the
exaltation of Nature into the Ideal.

"The one," said he, "is the Dutch School, the other is the Greek."

"Sir," said I, "the Dutch is the most in fashion."

"Yes, in painting, perhaps," answered my host, "but in literature--"

"It was of literature I spoke. Our growing poets are all for simplicity
and Betty Foy; and our critics hold it the highest praise of a work of
imagination, to say that its characters are exact to common life, even
in sculpture--"

"In sculpture! No, no! THERE the high ideal must at least be essential!"