‘Ay, ay,’ said I, ‘I have read of him in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.’

’Well, I do not go straight forward up the flight of steps conducting into the church, but I turn to the right, and, passing under the piazza, find myself in a court of the huge bulky house; and then ascend various staircases, and pass along various corridors and galleries, all of which I could describe to you, though I have never seen them; at last a door is unlocked, and we enter a room rather high, but not particularly large, communicating with another room, into which, however, I do not go, though there are noble things in that second room—­immortal things, by immortal artists; amongst others, a grand piece of Correggio; I do not enter it, for the grand picture of the world is not there; but I stand still immediately on entering the first room, and I look straight before me, neither to the right nor left, though there are noble things both on the right and left, for immediately before me at the farther end, hanging against the wall, is a picture which arrests me, and I can see nothing else, for that picture at the farther end hanging against the wall is the picture of the world. . . .’

Yes, go thy way, young enthusiast, and, whether to London town or to old Rome, may success attend thee; yet strange fears assail me and misgivings on thy account.  Thou canst not rest, thou say’st, till thou hast seen the picture in the chamber at old Rome hanging over against the wall; ay, and thus thou dust exemplify thy weakness—­thy strength too, it may be—­for the one idea, fantastic yet lovely, which now possesses thee, could only have originated in a genial and fervent brain.  Well, go, if thou must go; yet it perhaps were better for thee to bide in thy native land, and there, with fear and trembling, with groanings, with straining eyeballs, toil, drudge, slave, till thou hast made excellence thine own; thou wilt scarcely acquire it by staring at the picture over against the door in the high chamber of old Rome.  Seekest thou inspiration? thou needest it not, thou hast it already; and it was never yet found by crossing the sea.  What hast thou to do with old Rome, and thou an Englishman?  ’Did thy blood never glow at the mention of thy native land?’ as an artist merely?  Yes, I trow, and with reason, for thy native land need not grudge old Rome her ‘pictures of the world’; she has pictures of her own, ‘pictures of England’; and is it a new thing to toss up caps and shout—­England against the world?  Yes, against the world in all, in all; in science and in arms, in minstrel strain, and not less in the art ’which enables the hand to deceive the intoxicated soul by means of pictures.’ {143} Seek’st models? to Gainsborough and Hogarth turn, not names of the world, maybe, but English names—­and England against the world!  A living master? why, there he comes! thou hast had him long, he has long guided thy young hand towards the excellence which is yet far from thee, but which thou canst attain