Thus the
business-man in the street has other to think of than poetry; but
when he is inclined to look at a picture, or in his more poetical
humour, will he neglect the pictorial counterpart of what he
neglected before? To test this, show him a camera obscura, where
there is a more literal transcript of present-day nature than any
painting can be:--what is the result? He expresses no anxiety to quit
it, but a great curiosity to investigate; he feels it is very
beautiful, indeed more beautiful than nature: and this he will say is
because he does not see nature as an artist does. Now the solution of
all this is easy: 1st. He is in a mood of mind which renders him
accessible to the influences of poetry, which was not before the
case. 2nd. He looks at that steadily which he before regarded
cursorily; and, as the picture remains in his eye, it acquires an
amount of harmony, in behoof of an intrinsic harmony resident in the
organ itself, which exerts proportionately modifying influences on
all things that enter within it; and of the nervous harmony, and the
beautifully apportioned stimuli of alternating ocular spectra. 3rd.
There is a resolution of discord effected by the instrument itself,
inasmuch as its effects are homogeneous. All these harmonizing
influences are equally true of the painting; and though we have no
longer the homogeneous effect of the camera, we have the homogeneous
effect of one mind, viz.
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