Page:Leskov - The Sentry and other Stories.djvu/157



HERE are many people in our country, who think that only painters and sculptors are "artists," and indeed only those who have been found worthy of that title by the Academies—no others will they admit to be artists at all. For many Sazikov and Ovchinnikov are nothing more than silver-smiths. Other peoples think differently: Heine mentions a tailor who "was an artist" and "had ideas," and ladies' dresses made by Worth are even now spoken of as "artistic creations." It was recently written about one of these dresses, that it "concentrated a world of imagination in the point of the bodice."

In America the domain of art is considered still wider. The celebrated American author, Bret Harte, tells of an artist, who was greatly renowned among them for "working on the dead." He imparted to the faces of the deceased various consoling expressions testifying to the more or less happy state of their departed souls.

There were several grades of this art. I remember three: (1), calmness; (2), exalted