Art is one of the purest and highest elements in human happiness. It trains the mind through the eye, and the eye through the mind. SIR JOHN LUBBOCK. Art is understood by all civilized nations, while each has a separate language. Nature will always appear less beautiful than art because art is more accurate than Nature. PLATO. A room without pictures is like a house without windows. RUSKIN. He who looks at a fine picure looks out of the world of every day into the dreamland of one of the world's seers. For the time he uses not his own eyes, but the mind's eye of a Raphael, a Michelangelo, a Turner, a Corot. A picture in a gallery may be delightful to look upon, but infinitely more delightful is the art we own ourselves, that we can have when we please, and need not go anywhere to look at. SIR MARTIN CONWAY. Finally, good painting is a music and a melody. MICHELANGELO. FAMOUS PICTURES INTRODUCTORY A WORD ABOUT PICTURES Many young people who have a natural love for pictures are discouraged by their elders and by other young people who care nothing for such things. Yet it is a pathway to true and high pleasure, and it is the person who sees nothing in good pictures for whom we should be sorry. The one who has a natural appreciation of the beautiful should make the most of this gift. Like nearly everything else worth having, a knowledge and love of pictures mean time and study. Yet a very little thought will relieve any one of the necessity of gazing foolishly and ignorantly at a picture, like a baby gazing at a bright object, as some one has described it. If you see a beautiful lake or sunset or a spot in the country that takes you out of yourself for the time, it will give you much more pleasure if you think of it and try to recall it the next day and for many days, and go and see it again and again. It will give you still more pleasure if you take notice of the colors and forms as you would if you were going to draw or paint them from memory or as though you expected to describe them to another. A great picture, like a fine scene in the country, will re |