“Certainly not!  It is only an artist’s dream.  It was thus, that Homer appeared to him in his visions of the antique world.  Every one, you know, forms an image in his fancy of persons and things he has never seen; and the artist reproduces them in marble or on canvass.”

“And what is the image in your fancy?  Is it like this?”

“No; not entirely.  I have drawn my impressions from another source.  Whenever I think of Homer, which is not often, he walks before me, solemn and serene, as in the vision of the great Italian; in countenance neither sorrowful nor glad, followed by other bards, and holding in his right hand a sword!”

“That is a finer conception, than even this,” said Flemming.  “And I perceive from your words, as well as from this book, that you have a true feeling for art, and understand what it is.  You have had bright glimpses into the enchanted land.”

“I trust,” replied the lady modestly, “that I am not wholly without this feeling.  Certainly I have as strong and passionate a love of Art as of Nature.”

“But does it not often offend you to hear people speaking of Art and Nature as opposite and discordant things?  Surely nothing can be more false.  Nature is a revelation of God; Art a revelation of man.  Indeed, Art signifies no more than this.  Art is Power.  That is the original meaning of the word.  It is the creative power by which the soul of man makes itself known, through some external manifestation or outward sign.  As we can always hear the voice of God, walking in the garden, in the cool of the day, or under the star-light, where, to quote one of this poet’s verses, ’high prospects and the brows of all steep hills and pinnacles thrust up themselves for shows’;—­so, under the twilight and the starlight of past ages, do we hear the voice of man, walking amid the works of his hands, and city walls and towers and the spires of churches, thrust up themselves for shows.”

The lady smiled at his warmth; and he continued;

“This, however, is but a similitude; and Art and Nature are more nearly allied than by similitudes only.  Art is the revelation of man; and not merely that, but likewise the revelation of Nature, speaking through man.  Art preexists in Nature, and Nature is reproduced in Art.  As vaporsfrom the ocean, floating landward and dissolved in rain, are carried back in rivers to the ocean, so thoughts and the semblances of things that fall upon the soul of man in showers, flow out again in living streams of Art, and lose themselves in the great ocean, which is Nature.  Art and Nature are not, then, discordant, but ever harmoniously working in each other.”

Enthusiasm begets enthusiasm.  Flemming spake with such evident interest in the subject, that Miss Ashburton did not fail to manifest some interest in what he said; and, encouraged by this, he proceeded;

“Thus in this wondrous world wherein we live, which is the World of Nature, man has made unto himself another world hardly less wondrous, which is the World of Art.  And it lies infolded and compassed about by the other,