"'Of such is not the talk,' as the Germans would say. In as far as your
description applies, such are only tradesmen, and have no claim to be
considered now."

"Then I beg your pardon for interrupting. I am punished more than I
deserve, if you have lost your thread."

"I don't think I have. Let me see. Yes. I was saying that people hang
their walls with pictures of their choice; or provide music, &c., of
their choice. Let me keep to the pictures: their choice, consciously or
unconsciously, is determined by some expression that these pictures give
to what is in themselves--the buyers, I mean. They like to see their own
feelings outside of themselves."

"Is there not another possible motive--that the pictures teach them
something?"

"That, I venture to think, shows a higher moral condition than the other,
but still partakes of the other; for it is only what is in us already
that makes us able to lay hold of a lesson. It is there in the germ, else
nothing from without would wake it up."

"I do not quite see what all this has to do with Nature and her
influences."

"One step more, and I shall arrive at it. You will admit that the pictures
and objects of art of all kinds, with which a man adorns the house he has
chosen or built to live in, have thenceforward not a little to do with the
education of his tastes and feelings. Even when he is not aware of it, they
are working upon him,--for good, if he has chosen what is good, which alone