They soon thought no more of seeing. The wet
eyes, round-open, and the little scarlet upper lips, lifted, and drawn
slightly together, in passionate glow of utter wonder, became
picture-like, porcelain-like, in motionless joy, as the sweet multitude
of low notes fell, in their timely infinities, like summer rain. Only
La Robbia himself (nor even he, unless with tenderer use of color than is
usual in his work) could have rendered some image of that listening.
141. But if the reader can give due vitality in his fancy to these two
scenes, he will have in them representative types, clear enough for all
future purpose, of the several agencies of debased and perfect art. And
the interval may easily and continuously be filled by mediate gradations.
Between the entirely immodeset, unmeasured, and (in evil sense)
unmannered, execution with the fist; and the entirely modest, measured,
and (in the noblest sense) mannered, or moral'd execution with the
finger; between the impatient and unpractised doing, containing in itself
the witness of lasting impatience and idleness through all previous life,
and the patient and practised doing, containing in itself the witness
of self-restraint and unwearied toil through all previous life; between
the expressed subject and sentiment of home violation, and the expressed
subject and sentiment of home love; between the sympathy of audience,
given in irreverent and contemptuous rage, joyless as the rabidness of a
dog, and the sympathy of audience given in an almost appalled humility of
intense, rapturous, and yet entirely reasoning and reasonable pleasure;
between these two limits of octave, the reader will find he can class,
according to its modesty, usefulness and grace, or becomingness, all
other musical art.
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