“Now,” he said, “observe my face—­what does it express?”

“Despair!”

“Bah, it expresses peaceful resignation!  What does this express?”

“Rage!”

“Stuff!  It means terror!  This!”

“Imbecility!”

“Fool!  It is smothered ferocity!  Now this!”

“Joy!”

“Oh, perdition!  Any ass can see it means insanity!”

Expression!  People coolly pretend to read it who would think themselves presumptuous if they pretended to interpret the hieroglyphics on the obelisks of Luxor—­yet they are fully as competent to do the one thing as the other.  I have heard two very intelligent critics speak of Murillo’s Immaculate Conception (now in the museum at Seville,) within the past few days.  One said: 

“Oh, the Virgin’s face is full of the ecstasy of a joy that is complete —­that leaves nothing more to be desired on earth!”

The other said: 

“Ah, that wonderful face is so humble, so pleading—­it says as plainly as words could say it:  ’I fear; I tremble; I am unworthy.  But Thy will be done; sustain Thou Thy servant!’”

The reader can see the picture in any drawing-room; it can be easily recognized:  the Virgin (the only young and really beautiful Virgin that was ever painted by one of the old masters, some of us think,) stands in the crescent of the new moon, with a multitude of cherubs hovering about her, and more coming; her hands are crossed upon her breast, and upon her uplifted countenance falls a glory out of the heavens.  The reader may amuse himself, if he chooses, in trying to determine which of these gentlemen read the Virgin’s “expression” aright, or if either of them did it.

Any one who is acquainted with the old masters will comprehend how much “The Last Supper” is damaged when I say that the spectator can not really tell, now, whether the disciples are Hebrews or Italians.  These ancient painters never succeeded in denationalizing themselves.  The Italian artists painted Italian Virgins, the Dutch painted Dutch Virgins, the Virgins of the French painters were Frenchwomen—­none of them ever put into the face of the Madonna that indescribable something which proclaims the Jewess, whether you find her in New York, in Constantinople, in Paris, Jerusalem, or in the empire of Morocco.  I saw in the Sandwich Islands, once, a picture copied by a talented German artist from an engraving in one of the American illustrated papers.  It was an allegory, representing Mr. Davis in the act of signing a secession act or some such document.  Over him hovered the ghost of Washington in warning attitude, and in the background a troop of shadowy soldiers in Continental uniform were limping with shoeless, bandaged feet through a driving snow-storm.  Valley Forge was suggested, of course.  The copy seemed accurate, and yet there was a discrepancy somewhere.  After a long examination I discovered what it was—­the