The things we do!

He could talk the art cant very glibly, and
had a set of Morghens and Madonnas as became a clergyman and a man of
taste; but he saw not with eyes such as those wherewith Heaven had
endowed the humble little butler's boy, to whom splendours of Nature were
revealed to vulgar sights invisible, and beauties manifest in forms,
colours, shadows of common objects, where most of the world saw only what
was dull, and gross, and familiar. One reads in the magic story-books of
a charm or a flower which the wizard gives, and which enables the bearer
to see the fairies. O enchanting boon of Nature, which reveals to the
possessor the hidden spirits of beauty round about him! spirits which the
strongest and most gifted masters compel into painting or song. To others
it is granted but to have fleeting glimpses of that fair Art-world; and
tempted by ambition, or barred by faint-heartedness, or driven by
necessity, to turn away thence to the vulgar life-track, and the light of
common day.


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