"Well, why does that not satisfy us? why is it not a picture?"

"Because it stares, I suppose. Why does not that picture of my aunt
at Mrs. Week's cottage satisfy you as well as the chalk sketch in the
dining-room?"

"Because it has none of herself--her spirit."

"Well, I should say that nature has a self and a spirit which must be
caught, or else the Chinese would be the greatest artists on the face of
the earth."

"Yes, but why does an archway, or two trees standing up so as to
enclose the landscape, or--or any of those things that do to put in the
foreground, why do they enable you to make a picture, to catch this self
and spirit."

"Make the phial to enclose the genie," said Edmund. "Abstruse questions,
Marian; but perhaps it is because they contract the space, so as to
bring it more to the level of our capacity, make it less grand, and more
what we can get into keeping. To be sure, he would be a presumptuous man
who tried to make an exact likeness of that," he added, as they reached
the top of the hill, and found themselves on an open common, with here
and there a mass of rock peeping up, but for the most part covered with
purple heath and short furze, through which Ranger coursed, barking
joyously. The view was splendid, on one side the moors rising one
behind the other, till they faded in grey distance, each crowned with
a fantastic pile of rocks, one in the form of a castle, another of
a cathedral, another of a huge crouching lion, all known to the two