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elaborate and finished productions of human genius 

 and skill. Yet these splendid and ever gorgeous 

 sights pass away unheeded and unrecognised by 

 millions of our race. They cause neither surprise, 

 nor emotion, nor sentiment, nor thanksgiving. They 

 seem displays of artistic skill entirely thrown away 

 upon the greatest number of mankind, either because 

 they lack education towards such things, or lack a 

 sensibility that developes itself without any educa- 

 tion at alL 



Were there an artist to come among us who could 

 stand in Exeter Hall, in the presence of a living as- 

 sembly, and work with such marvellous celerity and 

 genius, that, in half an hour, there would glow from 

 his canvas a gorgeous sunset, such as flushes the 

 western Highlands in the autumn, and then, when 

 the spectators had gazed their fill, should rub it 

 hastily out, and overlay it in a twenty minutes' 

 work, with another picture, such as we often see 

 after sunset its silver white, its faint apple green, 

 its pink, its yellow, its orange hues, imperceptibly 

 mingling into grays, and the black blue of the upper 

 arch of the heavens, to be rubbed out again, and 

 succeeded by pictures of clouds all, or any of those 

 extraordinary combinations of grandeur, in form and 

 in colour, that makes one tremble to stand and look 

 up, these again to be followed by vivid portraitures 

 of more calm atmospheric conditions of the heavens, 

 without form or vapour, and so on endlessly such 

 a man would be followed by eager crowds, his works 

 lauded, and he himself called a god. He would be 



