 the right word: that the partaker of the life of art who repines at the
absence of the rewards, as they are called, of the pursuit might surely be
better occupied. Much rather should he endlessly wonder at his not having to pay
half his substance for his luxurious immersion. He enjoys it, so to speak,
without a tax; the effort of labour involved, the torment of expression, of
which we have heard in our time so much, being after all but the last refinement
of his privilege. It may leave him weary and worn; but how, after his fashion,
he will have lived! As if one were to expect at once freedom and ease! That
silly safety is but the sign of bondage and forfeiture. Who can imagine free
selection - which is the beautiful, terrible whole of art - without free
difficulty? This is the very franchise of the city and high ambition of the
citizen. The vision of the difficulty, as one looks back, bathes one's course in
a golden glow by which the very objects along the road are transfigured and
glorified; so that one exhibits them to other eyes with an elation possibly
presumptuous.
    Since I accuse myself at all events of these complacencies I take advantage
of them to repeat that I value, in my retrospect, nothing so much as the lively
light on the romantic property of my subject that I had not expected to
encounter. If in The American I invoked the romantic association without malice
prepense, yet with a production of the romantic effect that is for myself
unmistakeable, the occasion is of the best perhaps for penetrating a little the
obscurity of that principle. By what art or mystery, what craft of selection,
omission or commission, does a given picture of life appear to us to surround
its theme, its figures and images, with the air of romance while another picture
close beside it may affect us as steeping the whole matter in the element of
reality? It is a question, no doubt, on the painter's part, very much more of
perceived effect, effect after the fact, than of conscious design - though
indeed I have ever failed to see how a coherent picture of anything is
producible save by a complex of fine measurements. The cause of the deflexion,
in one pronounced sense or the other, must lie deep, however; so that for the
most part we recognise the character of our interest only after the particular
magic, as I say, has thoroughly operated - and then in truth but if we be a bit
critically minded, if we find our pleasure, that is
