not with the fond enthusiasm of an artist. How should he? His is
'casual fruition, joyless, unendeared.' But the painter is wedded to
his art--the mistress, queen, and idol of his soul. He has embarked his
all in it, fame, time, fortune, peace of mind--his hopes in youth, his
consolation in age: and shall he not feel a more intense interest in
whatever relates to it than the mere indolent trifler? Natural
sensibility alone, without the entire application of the mind to that
one object, will not enable the possessor to sympathise with all the
degrees of beauty and power in the conceptions of a Titian or a
Correggio; but it is he only who does this, who follows them into all
their force and matchless race, that does or can feel their full value.
Knowledge is pleasure as well as power. No one but the artist who has
studied nature and contended with the difficulties of art, can be aware
of the beauties, or intoxicated with a passion for painting. No one who
has not devoted his life and soul to the pursuit of art can feel the
same exultation in its brightest ornaments and loftiest triumphs which
an artist does. Where the treasure is, there the heart is also. It is
now seventeen years since I was studying in the Louvre (and I have on
since given up all thoughts of the art as a profession), but long after
I returned, and even still, I sometimes dream of being there again--of
asking for the old pictures--and not finding them, or finding them
changed or faded from what they were, I cry myself awake! What
gentleman-amateur ever does this at such a distance of time,--that is,
ever received pleasure or took interest enough in them to produce so
lasting an impression?

But it is said that if a person had the same natural taste, and the same
acquired knowledge as an artist, without the petty interests and
technical notions, he would derive a purer pleasure from seeing a fine
portrait, a fine landscape, and so on. This, however, is not so much