Had I foreseen it, perhaps I should not have undertaken that dissertation. And pray do not imagine that you discover in this _objection_ the artifice of a musician, for upon my honor I am none, Heaven be my witness, and all those who have heard me play the violin! But, even supposing the merits of the two arts to be equal, we must not be too hasty in concluding that the merits of the _disciples_ of Painting and Music are therefore balanced. We see children play the harpsichord as if they were _maestri_, but no one has ever been a good painter at twelve years old. Painting, besides taste and feeling, requires an amount of thoughtfulness that musicians can dispense with. Any day may you hear men who are well nigh destitute of head and heart, bring out from a violin or harp the most ravishing sounds. The human ANIMAL may be taught to play the harpsichord, and when it has learned of a good master, the soul can travel at her ease while sounds with which she does not concern herself are mechanically produced by the fingers. But the simplest thing in the world cannot be painted without the aid of all the faculties of the soul. If, however, any one should take it into his head to ply me with a distinction between the composition and the performance of music, I confess that he would give me some little difficulty. Ah, well! were all writers of essays quite candid they would all conclude as I am doing. When one enters upon the examination of a question, a dogmatic tone is generally assumed, because there has been a secret decision beforehand, just as I, notwithstanding my hypocritical impartiality, had decided in favor of painting. But discussion awakens objections, and everything ends with doubt. XXVI. _Raphael._ Now that I am more tranquil, I will endeavor to speak calmly of the two portraits that follow the picture of the shepherdess of the Alps. Raphael! Who but thyself could paint thy portrait; who but thyself would have dared attempt it? Thy open countenance, beaming with feeling and intellect, proclaims thy character and thy genius. To gratify thy shade, I have placed beside thee the portrait of thy mistress, whom the men of all generations will hold answerable for the loss of the sublime works of which art has been deprived by thy premature death. When I examine the portrait of Raphael, I feel myself penetrated by an almost religious respect for that great man, who, in the flower of his age, excelled the ancients, and whose pictures are at once the admiration and the despair of modern artists. My soul, in admiring it, is moved with indignation against that Italian who preferred her love to her lover, and who extinguished at her bosom that heavenly flame, that divine genius. Unhappy one! Knewest thou not that Raphael had announced a picture superior even to that of the _Transfiguration_? Didst thou not know that thine arms encircled the favorite of nature, the father of enthusiasm, a sublime genius ... a divinity?