The sketches on the walls are changed, from
time to time, so as to exhibit all the most interesting ones in turn.
Their whole charm is artistic, imaginative, and intellectual, and in no
degree of the upholstery kind; their outward presentment being, in
general, a design hastily shadowed out, by means of colored crayons, on
tinted paper, or perhaps scratched rudely in pen and ink; or drawn in
pencil or charcoal, and half rubbed out; very rough things, indeed, in
many instances, and the more interesting on that account, because it
seems as if the artist had bestirred himself to catch the first glimpse
of an image that did but reveal itself and vanish. The sheets, or
sometimes scraps of paper, on which they are drawn, are discolored with
age, creased, soiled; but yet you are magnetized by the hand of Raphael,
Michael Angelo, Leonardo, or whoever may have jotted down those
rough-looking master-touches. They certainly possess a charm that is
lost in the finished picture; and I was more sensible of forecasting
thought, skill, and prophetic design, in these sketches than in the most
consummate works that have been elaborated from them.
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