he can make their awkwardness and defects expressive; as stammerers sometimes take advantage of their impediment so that in itself it becomes an element of eloquence, of charm, or even of explicitness; while the extra attention rendered enables them to fetch about and dare to express things that the fluent would feel to be impossible and never attempt. [Illustration: APOLLO AND DIANA--Pen drawing in the British Museum, supposed to show the influence of the Belvedere Apollo] IV Lastly, it is in his drawings, perhaps, even more than in his copper engravings, that Dürer proves himself a master of "the art of seeing nature," as Reynolds phrased it; and the following sentence makes clear what is meant, for he says of painting "perhaps it ought to be as far removed from the vulgar idea of imitation, as the refined, civilised state in which we live is removed from a gross state of nature";[77] and again: "If we suppose a view of nature, represented with all the truth of the camera obscura, and the same scene represented by a great artist, how little and how mean will the one appear in comparison of the other, where no superiority is supposed from the choice of the subject."[78] Not only is outward nature infinitely varied, infinitely composite; but human nature--receptive and creative--is so too, and after we have gazed at an object for a few moments, we no longer see it the same as it was revealed to our first glance. Not only has its appearance changed for us, but the effect that it produces on our emotions and intelligence is no longer the same. Each successful mind, according to its degree of culture, arrives finally at a perception of every class of objects presented to it which is most in agreement with its own nature--that is, calls forth or nourishes its most cherished energies and efforts, while harmonising with its choicest memories. All objects in regard to which it cannot arrive at such a result oppress, depress, or even torment it. At least this is the case with our highest and most creative moods; but every man of parts has a vast range of moods, descending from this to the almost vacant contemplation of a cow--the innocence of whose eye, which perceives what is before it without transmuting it by recollection or creative effort, must appear almost ideal to the up-to-date critic who has recently revealed the innocent confusion of his mind in a ponderous tome on nineteenth-century art. The art of seeing nature, then, consists in being able to recognise how an object appears in harmony with any given mood; and the artist must employ his materials to suggest that appearance with the least expenditure of painful effort. The highest art sees all things in harmony with man's most elevated moods; the lowest sees nature much as Dutch painters and cows do. Now we can understand what Goethe means when he says that "Albrecht Dürer enjoyed the advantages of a profound realistic perception, and an