"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 ecstasy 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; but

we can not absolutely see these things when they are not there. I am

willing to believe that the eye of the practiced artist can rest upon the

Last Supper and renew a lustre where only a hint of it is left, supply a

tint that has faded away, restore an expression that is gone; patch, and

color, and add, to the dull canvas until at last its figures shall stand

before him aglow with the life, the feeling, the freshness, yea, with all

the noble beauty that was theirs when first they came from the hand of

215

The Innocents Abroad