landscape), "how the mists rising from the river fill up exactly those intervals where we need indistinctness, for artistic effect? Here, in the foreground, a few clear touches are not amiss: but a back-ground without mist, you know! It is simply barbarous! Yes, we need indistinctness!"
The orator looked so pointedly at me as he uttered these words, that I felt bound to reply, by murmuring something to the effect that I hardly felt the need myself——and that I enjoyed looking at a thing, better, when I could see it.
"Quite so!" the great man sharply took me up. "From your point of view, that is correctly put. But for any one who has a soul for Art, such a view is preposterous. Nature is one thing. Art is another. Nature shows us the world as it is. But Art——as a Latin author tells us——Art, you know——the words have escaped my memory——"
"Ars est celare Naturam," Arthur interposed with a delightful promptitude.
"Quite so!" the orator replied with an air of relief. "I thank you! Ars est celare
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