between a Guido and a daub--between a penny print, or the vilest scrawl,
and the most finished performance. In other words, all that excellence
which lies between these two extremes,--all, at least, that marks the
excess above mediocrity,--all that constitutes true beauty, harmony,
refinement, grandeur, is lost upon the common observer. But it is from
this point that the delight, the glowing raptures of the true adept
commence. An uninformed spectator may like an ordinary drawing better
than the ablest connoisseur; but for that very reason he cannot like the
highest specimens of art so well. The refinements not only of execution
but of truth and nature are inaccessible to unpractised eyes. The
exquisite gradations in a sky of Claude's are not perceived by such
persons, and consequently the harmony cannot be felt. Where there is no
conscious apprehension, there can be no conscious pleasure. Wonder at
the first sights of works of art may be the effect of ignorance and
novelty; but real admiration and permanent delight in them are the
growth of taste and knowledge. 'I would not wish to have your eyes,'
said a good-natured man to a critic who was finding fault with a picture
in which the other saw no blemish. Why so? The idea which prevented
him from admiring this inferior production was a higher idea of truth
and beauty which was ever present with him, and a continual source of
pleasing and lofty contemplations. It may be different in a taste for
outward luxuries and the privations of mere sense; but the idea of
perfection, which acts as an intellectual foil, is always an addition, a
support, and a proud consolation!

Richardson, in his _Essays_, which ought to be better known, has left
some striking examples of the felicity and infelicity of artists, both
as it relates to their external fortune and to the practice of their
art. In speaking of _the knowledge of hands_, he exclaims: 'When one is
considering a picture or a drawing, one at the same time thinks this was