Page:The Innocents Abroad (1869).djvu/214

192 and marred, and nearly all expression is gone from them; the hair is a dead blur upon the wall, and there is no life in the eyes. Only the attitudes are certain.

People come here from all parts of the world, and glorify this masterpiece. They stand entranced before it with bated breath and parted lips, and when they speak, it is only in the catchy ejaculations of rapture:

“O, wonderful!”

“Such expression!”

“Such grace of attitude!”

“Such dignity!”

“Such faultless drawing!”

“Such matchless coloring!”

“Such feeling!”

“What delicacy of touch!”

“What sublimity of conception!”

“A vision! a vision!”

I only envy these people; I envy them their honest admiration, if it be honest—their delight, if they feel delight. I harbor no animosity toward any of them. But at the same time the thought will intrude itself upon me, How can they see what is not visible? What would you think of a man who looked at some decayed, blind, toothless, pock-marked Cleopatra, and said: “What matchless beauty! What soul! What expression!” What would you think of a man who gazed upon a dingy, foggy sunset, and said: “What sublimity! what feeling! what richness of coloring!” What would you think of a man who stared in ecstacy upon a desert of stumps and said: “Oh, my soul, my beating heart, what a noble forest is here!”

You would think that those men had an astonishing talent for seeing things that had already passed away. It was what I thought when I stood before the Last Supper and heard men apostrophizing wonders, and beauties and perfections which had faded out of the picture and gone, a hundred years before they were born. We can imagine the beauty that was once in an aged face; we can imagine the forest if we see the stumps;