He is a plausible Mephistopheles, and possesses the magic that is the destruction of all other magic.

He annihilates color, warmth, and, more especially, sentiment and passion, at a touch.

If he spare anything, it will be some such matter as an earthen pipkin, or a bunch of herrings by Teniers; a brass kettle, in which you can see your rice, by Gerard Douw; a furred robe, or the silken texture of a mantle, or a straw hat, by Van Mieris; or a long-stalked wineglass, transparent and full of shifting reflection, or a bit of bread and cheese, or an over-ripe peach with a fly upon it, truer than reality itself, by the school of Dutch conjurers.

These men, and a few Flemings, whispers the wicked demon, were the only painters.

The mighty Italian masters, as you deem them, were not human, nor addressed their work to human sympathies, but to a false intellectual taste, which they themselves were the first to create.