ESTHETIC EMOTION. 415 



sympathies through the acquisition of a new point of contact with our 

 fellows. 



Almost all pictures tell a story. Those which seem not to do so at 

 first sight are usually found to be full of meaning on second look ; and 

 a very large proportion of all the pictures most commonly seen, those 

 m the illustrated journals, are intended almost solely as aids to narra- 

 tion. Stories are dear to us all. We are eager to hear them, to read 

 them, and especially to see them. One that is told by a picture, and so 

 is flashed upon the mind in a glance of the eye, adds to other possible 

 excellencies those of brevity and surprise. In a picture we look usually 

 first for what it tells — that it gives us, in a flash, a bit of life from a 

 new point of view, seen in a different light, touched with humor, pathos 

 or other sentiment — this is commendation enough. A portrait is to 

 most a story picture. It tells more about the person portrayed than 

 many pages of biography, and interests chiefly by what it tells. 



■ It is usual to decry this story-telling element in pictures. Mr. 

 John C. Van Dyke, for example, in his book on 'Art for Art's sake' 

 speaks of 'The Angelus' as having a 'literary interest crowded into it 

 to the detriment of pictorial effect.' We can not see in the picture, 

 he says, 'the sound of the bells of the Angelus coming on the evening 

 air, from the distant church-spire.' 'We must go to the catalogue to 

 find the meaning of those two peasants standing with bowed heads in 

 a potato field. ' And he says, that, ' two thousand years hence, with the 

 ringing of church-bells abandoned and forgotten fifteen hundred years 

 before, we would not comprehend and appreciate the picture as we now 

 do a Parthenon marble.' Mr. Van Dyke forgets that the Parthenon 

 marble itself also tells a story; and that it is because we know the 

 story well, because Greece and its religion, its social life and its art 

 are familiar that we comprehend and appreciate at once even a frag- 

 ment of that country's creations. The fragment arouses our recogni- 

 tion-pleasure, and most strongly. It appeals to us also by what it 

 tells of the past; it tells it easily because we are full of a knowledge 

 which makes us fit to receive it. Suppose Greece and her temples for- 

 gotten, a Parthenon marble would be beautiful still, probably, but it 

 would be no more easily comprehended and appreciated than would 

 'the Angelus' if church-bells had passed out of human memory. All 

 pictures are illustrative; all are story-telling in a measure. It is 

 inevitable that they should be so. They can not, as Mr. Van Dyke 

 seems to wish to have them do, ' show deep love of nature per se, inde- 

 pendent of human association.' The question of illustrative intent is 

 entirely one of degree. Nor is there any rule whereby one can say how 

 much of this element a picture should contain. There it is; there it 

 must be. It is good, and we may rejoice that it adds its force to that 

 of the other factors in the delights of picture-gazing. 



