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246 LETTERS.
tempt of the earthly organ to create, — is beautifully touch-
ing. ‘These signs appear to me asa sacred signature to his
closed career, so near the confines of a new one. Oh! he
has not finished yet, — the glorious one. Art is eternal!
The artist’s different tasks — faithfully to copy reality in
its every-day dress ; to reveal it in its ideal form; to copy
its details; to form a whole out of many parts — have often
been the subject of my thoughts. It has appeared to me
that no work of art can be beautiful in the highest sense
of the word, unless the beautiful form is based upon an
eternal, divine truth. Then shall Milton’s “ Paradise
Lost” stand higher than all the works of Byron; “ La Ma-
donna di San Sisto” be worth more than the Laocoin
group ; Fogelberg’s “ Oden ” — the personification of power
and wisdom — more than Hogarth’s paintings. For the
beautiful, as well as for the good, I would wish to have a
Jacob’s ladder with an endless number of steps reaching
from earth up to heaven; but the lower ones ought to be
prized as well as the highest. To value all, enjoy all, do
justice to all therein, I see the greatest happiness and an
enviable faculty.
I have not yet told you what I think of the life of a col-
lector of works of art. But I have said that it is a happy
life. -It is a social life in its noblest form: he associates
with what life has most noble and most valuable, were it
only not in things! You see, my dear Baron, herein lies
one of the reasons which makes me incapable of becoming
a collector, and which has determined my taste for a life
a la Diogéne. With every trifling toy we forge another
little chain, which fetters us to earth.
But I will not tire you any longer. I am a beginner,
although old in years, and my endeavors to unriddle my-
self cannot be pleasant to others.
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