Very likely this may be so. At all events,
however, I am to send him the manuscript, and he will at least give me
his advice and assistance in finding a publisher. He was good enough to
express great regret that I had no work of my own to give him for
publication; and, truly, I regret it too, since, being a resident in
England, I could now have all the publishing privileges of a native
author. He presented me with a copy of an illustrated edition of
Longfellow's Poems, and I took my leave.
Thence I went to the Picture Gallery at the British Institution, where
there are three rooms full of paintings by the first masters, the
property of private persons. Every one of them, no doubt, was worth
studying for a long, long time; and I suppose I may have given, on an
average, a minute to each. What an absurdity it would seem, to pretend
to read two or three hundred poems, of all degrees between an epic and a
ballad, in an hour or two! And a picture is a poem, only requiring the
greater study to be felt and comprehended; because the spectator must
necessarily do much for himself towards that end. I saw many beautiful
things,--among them some landscapes by Claude, which to the eye were like
the flavor of a rich, ripe melon to the palate.
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