One picture in ten thousand, perhaps, ought to live in the applause of mankind, from generation to generation, until the colors fade and blacken out of sight, or the canvas rot entirely away.

For the rest, let them be piled in garrets, just as the tolerable poets are shelved, when their little day is over.

Is a painter more sacred than a poet?
And as for these galleries of Roman palaces, they were to Hilda, -- though she still trod them with the forlorn hope of getting back her sympathies,--they were drearier than the whitewashed walls of a prison corridor.

If a magnificent palace were founded, as was generally the case, on hardened guilt and a stony conscience,--if the prince or cardinal who stole the marble of his vast mansion from the Coliseum, or some Roman temple, had perpetrated still deadlier crimes, as probably he did,--there could be no fitter punishment for his ghost than to wander, perpetually through these long suites of rooms, over the cold marble or mosaic of the floors, growing chiller at every eternal footstep.

Fancy the progenitor of the Dorias thus haunting those heavy halls where his posterity reside! Nor would it assuage his monotonous misery, but increase it manifold, to be compelled to scrutinize those masterpieces of art, which he collected with so much cost and care, and gazing at them unintelligently, still leave a further portion of his vital warmth at every one.
Such, or of a similar kind, is the torment of those who seek to enjoy pictures in an uncongenial mood.