"Othello", conscious that there is not the actual physical suffering
which there seems to be, the mind contemplates the real meaning which
underlies that appearance, and curses jealousy and the unmanly passions.

Even in a very low walk of art the same principle is manifested. A man
might not care to adorn his parlor with the carcass of an ox or a hog,
nor invite to his table boors muzzy with beer. But the most elegant of
nations prizes the pictures of Teniers at extraordinary prices, and
hangs its galleries with works minutely representing the shambles.
Here, again, the explanation is this: that the mind, rejecting any
idea of actuality in the picture, is charmed with the delicacy of
detail, with lovely color, with tone, with tenderness, and all these
are qualities inseparable from the picture, and do not belong by any
necessity to the actual carcasses of animals. In the shambles, the
sense of disgust and repulsion overcomes any pleasure in light and
color. In the parlor, if the spectator were persuaded by the picture
to hold his nose, the thing would be as unlovely as it is in nature.
Imitation pleases only so far as it is known to be imitation. If
deception by imitation were the object of art, then the material of
the sculptor should be wax, and not marble. Every visitor mistakes
the sitting figure of Cobbett, in Madame Tussaud's collection of
wax-works, for a real man, and will very likely, as we did, speak to
it. But who would accost the Moses of Michael Angelo, or believe the
sitting Medici in his chapel to have speech?

There is something unhandsomely derogatory to art in this common view.
It is forgotten that art is not subsidiary nor auxiliary to nature,
but it is a distinct ministry, and has a world of its own. They are
not in opposition, nor do they clash. The cardinal fact of imitation
in works of art is evident enough. The exquisite charm of art lies in