Page:Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 - Volume 2.djvu/165

 I must confess, that any rules (except the immutable laws of moral rectitude) that tend to limit the objects on which man is to exercise his faculty of the imagination, appear to me contrary to the scope of our creation. We are so far from being all born possessed of equal powers of mind, that since the world began there has been scarcely a hundred among us capable of the higher flights of the intellect. How few possess, in any degree, the capacity of becoming painters, and far fewer are those who are able to rise to an exalted order of art. We ought to know what the highest is,—that those who feel the power should endeavour to elevate themselves to it; but beauty may be found elsewhere, and must not be rejected. Bigotry is ever to be eschewed in all that pertains to man; to confine painters to one class of pictures, is to turn some who would be great, if allowed to originate subjects of a lower grade, into tame copyists, and humble, lifeless imitators of the thoughts of others. As well insist that all poets should write hymns and heroic poetry, as that painters should confine the pencil to the delineation of the conceptions of religious mysticism.

The genuine school of Christian idealism is, for the present, come to an end. And I confess, as far as I may be allowed to judge, that it strikes me that the