THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS 



would be huddled together in piled-up 

 and running-over laudation, and curses 

 on our insular swine-eyes that could 

 not see it. I have not been to Venice, 

 therefore I do not pretend to a know- 

 ledge of that mediaeval potsherd; this 

 I do know, that in all the endless 

 pictures on the walls of the galleries 

 in London, year after year exposed and 

 disappearing like snow somewhere un- 

 seen, never has there appeared one with 

 such a subject as this. Weak, feeble, 

 mosaic, gimcrack, coloured tiles, and 

 far-fetched compound monsters, artifi- 

 cial as the graining on a deal front 

 door, they cannot be compared; it is 

 the ginger-bread gilt on a circus car 

 to the column of a Greek temple. This 

 is pure open air, grand as Nature her- 

 self, because it is Nature with, as I 

 say, the heart of a man added. 

 But if any one desire the meretricious 

 painting of warm light and cool yet 



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