When Flemming awoke the next morning he saw the sky dark and lowering. From the mountain tops hung a curtain of mist, whose heavy folds waved to and fro in the valley below. Over all the landscape, the soft, summer rain was falling. No admiring eyes would look up that day at the Staubbach.  
A rainy day in Switzerland puts a sudden stop to many diversions. The coachman may drive to the tavern¹ and then back to the stable; but no farther. The sunburnt guide may sit at the ale-house door, and welcome; and the boatman whistle and curse the clouds, at his own sweet will; but no foot stirs abroad for all that; no traveller moves, if he has time to stay. The rainy daygives him time for reflection. He has leisure now to take cognizance of his impressions, and make up his account with the mountains. He remembers, too, that he has friends at home; and writes up the Journal, neglected for a week or more; and letters neglected longer; or finishes the rough pencil-sketch², begun yesterday in the open air. On the whole he is not sorry it rains; though disappointed.
 
Flemming was both sorry and disappointed; but he did not on that account fail to go over to the Ashburtons at the appointed hour. He found them sitting in the parlour. The mother was reading, and the daughter retouching a sketch of the Lake of Thun. After the usual salutations, Flemming seated himself near the daughter, and said;
 
"We shall have no Staubbach to-day, I presume; only this Giessbach from the clouds."
 
"Nothing more, I suppose. So we must be content to stay in-doors; and listen to the soundof the eves-dropping rain. It gives me time to finish some of these rough sketches³."
 
"It is a pleasant pastime," said Flemming; "and I perceive you are very skilful⁴. I am delighted to see, that you can draw a straight line. I never before saw a lady's sketch-book, in which all the towers did not resemble the leaning Tower of Pisa. I always tremble for the little men under them."
 
"How absurd!" exclaimed Mary Ashburton, with a smile that passed through the misty⁶ air of Flemming's thoughts, like a sunbeam; "For one, I succeed much better in straight lines than in any others. Here I have been trying a half-hour to make this water-wheel round; and round it never will be."
 
"Then let it remain as it is. It looks uncommonly⁷ picturesque⁸, and may pass for a new invention."
 
The lady continued to sketch, and Flemming to gaze at her beautiful face; often repeating to himself those lines in Marlow's Faust;
 
"O thou art fairer than the evening air,
 
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars!"
 
He certainly would have betrayed himself to the maternal⁹ eye of Mrs. Ashburton, had she not been wholly absorbed in the follies¹⁰ of a fashionable novel. Ere long the fair sketcher¹¹ had paused for a moment; and Flemming had taken her sketch-book in his hands and was looking it through from the beginning with ever-increasing delight, half of which he dared not express, though he favored her with some comments and bursts of admiration¹².
 
"This is truly a very beautiful sketch of Murten and the battle-field! How quietly the land-scape sleeps there by the lake, after the battle! Did you ever read the ballad¹³ of Veit Weber, the shoe-maker, on this subject? He says, the routed Burgundians jumped into the lake, and the Swiss Leaguers shot them down like wild ducks among the reeds. He fought in the battle and wrote the ballad afterwards;--
 
'He had himself laid hand on sword,
 
He who this rhyme did write;
 
Till evening mowed¹⁴ he with the sword,
 
And sang the song at night.' "
 
"You must give me the whole ballad," said Miss Ashburton; "it will serve to illustrate¹⁵ the sketch."
 
"And the sketch to illustrate the ballad. And now we suddenly slide down the Alps into Italy, and are even in Rome, if I mistake not. This is surely a head of Homer?"
 
"Yes," replied the lady, with a little enthusiasm. "Do you not remember the marble bust¹⁶ at Rome? When I first beheld¹⁷ that bust, it absolutely inspired me with awe¹⁸. It is not the face of a man, but of a god!"
 
"And you have done it no injustice¹⁹ in your copy," said Flemming, catching²⁰ a new enthusiasm from hers. "With what a classic grace the fillet, passing round the majestic²¹ forehead, confines his flowing locks, which mingle²² with his beard! The countenance²³, too, is calm, majestic, godlike! Even the fixed²⁴ and sightless eyeballs do not mar⁵ the imageof the seer! Such were the sightless eyes of the blind old man of Chios. They seem to look with mournful solemnity into the mysterious future; and the marble lips to repeat that prophetic passage in the Hymn²⁵ to Apollo; 'Let me also hope to be remembered in ages to come. And when any one, born of the tribes of men, comes hither, a weary traveller, and inquires, who is the sweetest of the Singing Men, that resort to your feasts, and whom you most delight to hear, do you make answer for me. It is the Blind Man, who dwells in Chios; his songs excel all that can ever be sung!' But do you really believe, that this is a portrait of Homer?"
 
"Certainly not! It is only an artist's dream. It was thus, that Homer appeared to him in his visions of the antique world. Every one, you know, forms an image in his fancy of persons and things he has never seen; and the artist reproduces them in marble or on canvass²⁶."
 
"And what is the image in your fancy? Is it like this?"
 
"No; not entirely²⁷. I have drawn²⁸ my impressions from another source. Whenever I think of Homer, which is not often, he walks before me, solemn and serene²⁹, as in the vision of the great Italian; in countenance neither sorrowful nor glad, followed by other bards³⁰, and holding in his right hand a sword!"
 
"That is a finer conception, than even this," said Flemming. "And I perceive from your words, as well as from this book, that you have a true feeling for art, and understand what it is. You have had bright glimpses into the enchanted³¹ land."
 
"I trust," replied the lady modestly, "that I am not wholly without this feeling. Certainly I have as strong and passionate³² a love of Art as of Nature."
 
"But does it not often offend you to hear people speaking of Art and Nature as opposite and discordant³³ things? Surely nothing can be more false. Nature is a revelation of God; Art a revelation of man. Indeed, Art signifies no more than this. Art is Power. That is the original meaning of the word. It is the creative power by which the soul of man makes itself known, through some external manifestation³⁴ or outward sign. As we can always hear the voice of God, walking in the garden, in the cool of the day, or under the star-light, where, to quote one of this poet's verses, 'high prospects³⁵ and the brows of all steep hills and pinnacles³⁶ thrust up themselves for shows';--so, under the twilight³⁷ and the starlight of past ages, do we hear the voice of man, walking amid the works of his hands, and city walls and towers and the spires³⁸ of churches, thrust up themselves for shows."
 
The lady smiled at his warmth; and he continued;
 
"This, however, is but a similitude; and Art and Nature are more nearly allied³⁹ than by similitudes only. Art is the revelation of man; and not merely that, but likewise the revelation of Nature, speaking through man. Art preëxists in Nature, and Nature is reproduced in Art. As vaporsfrom the ocean, floating landward and dissolved in rain, are carried back in rivers to the ocean, so thoughts and the semblances⁴¹ of things that fall upon the soul of man in showers, flow out again in living streams of Art, and lose themselves in the great ocean, which is Nature. Art and Nature are not, then, discordant, but ever harmoniously⁴² working in each other."
 
Enthusiasm begets⁴³ enthusiasm. Flemming spake with such evident interest in the subject, that Miss Ashburton did not fail to manifest some interest in what he said; and, encouraged by this, he proceeded;
 
"Thus in this wondrous⁴⁴ world wherein we live, which is the World of Nature, man has made unto himself another world hardly less wondrous, which is the World of Art. And it lies infolded and compassed about by the other,
 
'And the clear region where 't was born,
 
Round in itself incloses.'
 
Taking this view of art, I think we understand more easily the skill of the artist, and the differencebetween him and the mere⁴⁰ amateur. What we call miracles and wonders of art are not so to him who created them. For they were created by the natural movements of his own great soul. Statues, paintings, churches, poems, are but shadows of himself;--shadows in marble, colors, stone, words. He feels and recognises their beauty; but he thought these thoughts and produced these things as easily as inferior minds do thoughts and things inferior. Perhaps more easily. Vague images and shapes of beauty floating through the soul, the semblances of things as yet indefinite or ill-defined, and perfect only when put in art,--this Possible Intellect, as the Scholastic⁴⁵ Philosophers have termed it,--the artist shares in common with us all. The lovers of art are many. But the Active Intellect, the creative power,--the power to put these shapes and im............