Left not unvisited a glorious work,
1835.
[4] “When Wilkie was in the Escurial, looking at Titian’s famous picture of the Last Supper, in the Refectory there, an old Jeronymite said to him: ‘I have sate daily in sight of that picture for now nearly three score years; during that time my companions have dropt off, one after another—all who were my seniors, all who were my contemporaries, and many, or most of those who were younger than myself; more than one generation has passed away, and there the figures in the picture have remained unchanged! I look at them till I sometimes think that they are the realities, and we but shadows!’
I wish I could record the name of the monk by whom that natural feeling was so feelingly and strikingly expressed.
The shows of things are better than themselves,
says the author of the tragedy of Nero, whose name also I could wish had been forthcoming; and the classical reader will remember the lines of Sophocles:
ὁρῶ γὰρ ἡμᾶς οὐδὲν ὄντας ἄλλο, πλὴν
εἴδωλ’, ὅσοιπερ ζῶμεν, ὴ κούφην σκιάν.
These are reflections which should make us think
Of that same time when no more change shall be