We can imagine the beauty that was once in an aged face; we can imagine the forest if we see the stumps; but we can not absolutely see these things when they are not there.

I am willing to believe that the eye of the practiced artist can rest upon the Last Supper and renew a lustre where only a hint of it is left, supply a tint that has faded away, restore an expression that is gone; patch, and color, and add, to the dull canvas until at last its figures shall stand before him aglow with the life, the feeling, the freshness, yea, with all the noble beauty that was theirs when first they came from the hand of the master.

But I can not work this miracle.

Can those other uninspired visitors do it, or do they only happily imagine they do?
After reading so much about it, I am satisfied that the Last Supper was a very miracle of art once.

But it was three hundred years ago.
It vexes me to hear people talk so glibly of "feeling," "expression," "tone," and those other easily acquired and inexpensive technicalities of art that make such a fine show in conversations concerning pictures.
There is not one man in seventy-five hundred that can tell what a pictured face is intended to express.