The landscapes in the exhibition gave her "unalloyed delight." She found in them Mr. Allston's true mastery,—"a power of sympathy, which gives each landscape a perfectly individual character.... The soul of the painter," she says, "is in these landscapes, but not his character. Is not that the highest art? Nature and the soul combined; the former freed from crudities or blemishes, the latter from its merely human aspect."[{81}]
Allston's Miriam suggests to Margaret a different treatment of the subject:—
"This maiden had been nurtured in a fair and highly civilized country, in the midst of wrong and scorn indeed, but beneath the shadow of sublime institutions. Amid all the pains and penances of slavery, the memory of Joseph, the presence of Moses, exalt her soul to the highest pitch of national pride.
"Imagine the stately and solemn beauty with which such nurture and such a position might invest the Jewish Miriam. Imagine her at the moment when her lips were unsealed, and she was permitted to sing the song of deliverance. Realize this situation, and oh, how far will this beautiful picture fall short of your demands!"
To such a criticism Mr. Allston might have replied that a picture in words is one thing, a picture in colors quite another; and that the complex intellectual expression in which Margaret delighted is appropriate to literary, but not to pictorial art.
Much in the same way does she reason concerning one of Allston's most admired paintings, which represents Jeremiah in prison dictating to Baruch:—
"The form of the prophet is brought out in such noble relief, is in such fine contrast to the pale and feminine sweetness of the scribe at his[{82}] feet, that for a time you are satisfied. But by and by you begin to doubt whether this picture is not rather imposing than majestic. The dignity of the prophet's appearance seems to lie rather in the fine lines of the form and drapery than in the expression of the face. It was well observed by one who looked on him, that, if the eyes were cast down, he would become an ordinary man. This is true, and the expression of the bard must not depend on a look or gesture, but beam with mild electricity from every feature. Allston's Jeremiah is not the mournfully indignant bard, but the robust and stately Jew, angry that men will not mark his word and go his way."
The test here imagined, that of concealing the eyes, would answer as little in real as in pictured life. Although the method of these criticisms is arbitrary, the conclusion to which they bring Margaret is one in which many will agree with her:—
"The more I have looked at these pictures, the more I have been satisfied that the grand historical style did not afford the scope most proper to Mr. Allston's genius. The Prophets and Sibyls are for the Michael Angelos. The Beautiful is Mr. Allston's dominion. Here he rules as a genius, but in attempts such as I have been considering, can only show his appreciation[{83}] of the stern and sublime thoughts he wants force to reproduce."
Margaret is glad to go back from these more labored and unequal compositions to those lovely feminine creations which had made themselves so beloved that they seemed to belong to the spiritual family of Boston itself, and to "have floated across the painter's heaven on the golden clouds of fantasy."