This hallowed work of genius shows what pictorial art, devoutly
exercised, might effect in behalf of religious truth; involving, as it
does, deeper mysteries of revelation, and bringing them closer to man's
heart, and making him tenderer to be impressed by them, than the most
eloquent words of preacher or prophet.
It is not of pictures like the above that galleries, in Rome or
elsewhere, are made up, but of productions immeasurably below them,
and requiring to be appreciated by a very different frame of mind. Few
amateurs are endowed with a tender susceptibility to the sentiment of
a picture; they are not won from an evil life, nor anywise morally
improved by it. The love of art, therefore, differs widely in its
influence from the love of nature; whereas, if art had not strayed away
from its legitimate paths and aims, it ought to soften and sweeten
the lives of its worshippers, in even a more exquisite degree than the
contemplation of natural objects. But, of its own potency, it has no
such effect; and it fails, likewise, in that other test of its moral
value which poor Hilda was now involuntarily trying upon it. It cannot
comfort the heart in affliction; it grows dim when the shadow is upon
us.
So the melancholy girl wandered through those long galleries, and over
the mosaic pavements of vast, solitary saloons, wondering what had
become of the splendor that used to beam upon her from the walls. She
grew sadly critical, and condemned almost everything that she was wont
to admire. Heretofore, her sympathy went deeply into a picture, yet
seemed to leave a depth which it was inadequate to sound; now, on the
contrary, her perceptive faculty penetrated the canvas like a steel
probe, and found but a crust of paint over an emptiness. Not that she
gave up all art as worthless; only it had lost its consecration. One
picture in ten thousand, perhaps, ought to live in the applause of
mankind, from generation to generation, until the colors fade and
blacken out of sight, or the canvas rot entirely away. For the rest, let
them be piled in garrets, just as the tolerable poets are shelved, when
their little day is over. Is a painter more sacred than a poet?
And as for these galleries of Roman palaces, they were to Hilda,
--though she still trod them with the forlorn hope of getting back her
sympathies,--they were drearier than the whitewashed walls of a prison
corridor. If a magnificent palace were founded, as was generally the
case, on hardened guilt and a stony conscience,--if the prince or
cardinal who stole the marble of his vast mansion from the Coliseum, or
some Roman temple, had perpetrated still deadlier crimes, as probably he
did,--there could be no fitter punishment for his ghost than to wander,
perpetually through these long suites of rooms, over the cold marble or
mosaic of the floors, growing chiller at every eternal footstep. Fancy
the progenitor of the Dorias thus haunting those heavy halls where
his posterity reside! Nor would it assuage his monotonous misery, but
increase it manifold, to be compelled to scrutinize those masterpieces
of art, which he collected with so much cost and care, and gazing at
them unintelligently, still leave a further portion of his vital warmth
at every one.