It is pitiable to think
how many well-meaning enthusiasts have fallen victims to the careless or
crafty curator. Sometimes it scarcely needs a connoisseur to suspect the
good faith of catalogues. I, myself, a mere babe and suckling, came to
the conclusion, after a visit to the Velasquez Exhibition in London, that
Velasquez must have been very versatile. It is too bad that artists
should be hanged for crimes they never committed. 'T is to be hoped their
ghosts carefully avoid the Galleries. But beshrew your paintings! My eyes
make pictures--not like Coleridge's when they're shut, but when they 're
open. Who would not rather lie with me in the _podere_ in the shade of
the cypress trees, under the blue, blue sky, and behold through a tangle
of olive-boughs the marvellous Dome of Florence, as satisfying as the
sea, or under a starry heaven the loveliest of cities glittering like a
rival firmament with answering constellations? And yet I recant. For if
there is one piece of art which is better than nature, 't is Botticelli's
so-called "Spring," which, long misprised and now worm-riddled, adds the
last magic to the wonderful flower-city. To her that hath shall be given.
GLASGOW
"And what do you think of Glasgow?" said the pretty lady interviewer--I
have the right to say she was pretty because she said in print that I
wasn't.
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