Yet who but has thus felt its force?
Who has not had a shock of day-dream desecration on chancing upon an illustrated edition of some book whose story he had lain to heart?
Portraits of people, pictures of places, he does not know, and yet which purport to be his! And I venture to believe that to more than one of us the exquisite pathos of the Bride of Lammermoor is gone when Lucia warbles her woes, be it never so entrancingly, to an admiring house.

It almost seems as if the garish publicity of using her name for operatic title were a special intervention of the Muse, that we might the less connect song with story,--two sensations that, like two lights, destroy one another by mutual interference.
Against this preference shown the sketch it may be urged that to appreciate such suggestions presupposes as much art in the public as in the painter.

But the ability to appreciate a thing when expressed is but half that necessary to express it.

Some understanding must exist in the observer for any work to be intelligible.

It is only a question of degree.