The Cathedral, Too, Affects Me More In Externals
Than Any Yet.
And the spire looks as I expected that of Strasbourg
would.
As to the grammarye of bells and chimes, I deliver that over to
Charlie. But - I have seen Rubens's painting! Before I came to Europe,
Longfellow said to me, "You must go to Antwerp, to see Rubens."
"I do not think I shall like Rubens," was my reply.
"But you will, though. Yet never judge till you have been to Antwerp."
So, during our various meanders, I kept my eye with a steady resolve
on this place. I confess I went out to see the painting without much
enthusiasm. My experience with Correggio's Notte, and some of the
celebrities of Dresden, was not encouraging. I was weary, too, with
sightseeing. I expected to find an old, dim picture, half spoiled by
cleaning, which I should be required to look into shape, by an
exercise of my jaded imagination.
Alter coming down from hearing the chimes, we went into a side room,
and sat down before the painting. My first sensation was of
astonishment, blank, absolute, overwhelming. After all that I had
seen, I had no idea of a painting like this. I was lifted off my feet,
as much as by Cologne cathedral, or Niagara Falls, so that I could
neither reason nor think whether I was pleased or not. It is
difficult, even now, to analyze the sources of this wonderful power.
The excellence of this picture does not lie, like Raphael's, in a
certain ideal spirituality, by which the scene is raised above earth
to the heavenly sphere; but rather in a power, strong, human, almost
homely, by which, not an ideal, but the real scene is forced home upon
the heart.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 403 of 455
Words from 106948 to 107243
of 120793
