Now let us look at one of his Storms at Sea, when he wrought from his own mind.  A dark leaden atmosphere prepares us for something fearful:  suddenly a scene of tumult, fierce, wild, disastrous, bursts upon us; and we feel the shock drive, as it were, every other thought from the mind:  the terrible vision now seizes the imagination, filling it with sound and motion:  we see the clouds fly, the furious waves one upon another dashing in conflict, and rolling, as if in wrath, towards the devoted ship:  the wind blows from the canvas; we hear it roar through her shrouds; her masts bend like twigs, and her last forlorn hope, the close-reefed foresail, streams like a tattered flag:  a terrible fascination still constrains us to look, and a dim, rocky shore looms on her lee:  then comes the dreadful cry of “Breakers ahead!” the crew stand appalled, and the master’s trumpet is soundless at his lips.  This is the uproar of nature, and we feel it to be true; for here every line, every touch, has a meaning.  The ragged clouds, the huddled waves, the prostrate ship, though forced by contrast into the sharpest angles, all agree, opposed as they seem,—­evolving harmony out of apparent discord.  And this is Genius, which no criticism can ever disprove.

But all great names, it is said, must have their shadows.  In our Art they have many shadows, or rather I should say, reflections; which are more or less distinct according to their proximity to the living originals, and, like the images in opposite mirrors, becoming themselves reflected and re-reflected with a kind of battledoor alternation, grow dimmer and dimmer till they vanish from mere distance.

Thus have the great schools of Italy, Flanders, and Holland lived and walked after death, till even their ghosts have become familiar to us.

We would not, however, be understood as asserting that we receive pleasure only from original works:  this would be contradicting the general experience.  We admit, on the contrary, that there are hundreds, nay, thousands, of pictures having no pretensions to originality of any kind, which still afford pleasure; as, indeed, do many things out of the Art, which we know to be second-hand, or imperfect, and even trifling.  Thus grace of manner, for instance, though wholly unaided by a single definite quality, will often delight us, and a ready elocution, with scarce a particle of sense, make commonplace agreeable; and it seems to be, that the pain of mental inertness renders action so desirable, that the mind instinctively surrounds itself with myriads of objects, having little to recommend them but the property of keeping it from stagnating.  And we are far from denying a certain value to any of these, provided they be innocent:  there are times when even the wisest man will find commonplace wholesome.  All we have attempted to show is, that the effect of an original work, as opposed to an imitation, is marked by a difference, not of degree merely, but of kind; and that this difference cannot fail to be felt, not, indeed, by every one, but by any competent judge, that is, any one in whom is developed, by natural exercise, that internal sense by which the spirit of life is discerned.