SUNNY MEMORIES OF FOREIGN LANDS.
The artist as prophet.
But, I take it, every true painter, poet, and artist is in some sense so far a prophet that his utterances convey more to other minds than he himself knows; so that, doubtless, should all the old masters rise from the dead, they might be edified by what posterity has found in their books.
Difficulty of criticism.
Certainly no emotions so rigidly reject critical restraint and disdain to be bound by rule as those excited by the fine arts. A man unimpressible and incapable of moods and tenses is for that reason an incompetent critic; and the sensitive, excitable man, how can he know that he does not impose his peculiar mood as a general rule?
Rembrandt and Hawthorne.
I always did admire the gorgeous and solemn mysteries of his coloring. Rembrandt is like Hawthorne. He chooses simple and every-day objects, and so arranges light and shadow as to give them a sombre richness and mysterious gloom. “The House of the Seven Gables” is a succession of Rembrandt pictures, done in words instead of oils. Now, this pleases us, because our life really is a haunted one, the simplest thing in it is a mystery, the invisible world always lies around us like a shadow, and therefore this dreamy, golden gleam of Rembrandt meets somewhat in our inner consciousness to which it corresponds....