164 BEAUTY, COMPOSITION 



As dreams of the night bring us home to ourselves and 

 discover hidden fountain-heads of passion, so this indefinite 

 illimitable desire, which art excites, creates for those who feel 

 it lasting habits of emotion. The recurrent vibrations of that 

 desire, the persistent images with which it is connected, the 

 mode in which we have been touched to fine pervasive 

 spiritual issues, remain with us for good or evil, abiding 

 witnesses to art's controlling power. 



But how is art enabled to do all this ? Not by rivalling 

 the draughtsmanship of the sun and the accuracy of a 

 mechanical process. Nay, rather by the exercise of human 

 faculties alone purged insight, fiery yet patient imagination, 

 earnest thought, love of the best things, ever-eager selection 

 of the highest man can rise to, strong planning and strenuous 

 application to the execution of the plan. The whole 

 macrocosm and all creatures of God, from the cedar of 

 Libanus to the hyssop upon the wall, from Priam among the 

 burning palaces of Troy-town to the boors of a Dutch tavern, 

 from an Olympian athlete to an idle apprentice, from Achilles 

 and S. Francis to Tom Jones and Parson Andrews, lie open to 

 artistic representation. The artist at any hour calls up scenes 

 we cannot see with our own eyes. He transports us from 

 Camberwell to Athens, from Baker Street to the Great 

 Pyramid, from a ball in Belgravia to the dances of Titania's 

 elves. Yet the magic wand of this Prospero is nothing else 

 but the artist's own mind, which stirs our mind and puts 

 before our eyes the vision. Try as he may do to escape from 

 the conditions under which he labours, he will find that 

 he does not make things as they are, but as they exist for his 

 consciousness ; and all his realistic skill must finally subserve 

 the expression of the thought and the emotion which himself 

 contains. 



