_Spectator._--It is your duty, having questioned me into this dilemma, to question me out again. _Agent._--The feeling you have at the exhibition of an opera cannot be rightly called deception? _Spectator._--I agree. Still it is a sort of deception; something nearly allied to it. _Agent._--Tell me, do you not almost forget yourself? _Spectator._--Not almost, but quite, when the whole or some part is excellent. _Agent._--You are enchanted? _Spectator._--It has happened more than once. _Agent._--Can you explain under what circumstances? _Spectator._--Under so many, it would be hard to tell. _Agent._--Yet you have already told when it is most apt to happen, namely, when all is in harmony. _Spectator._--Undoubtedly. _Agent._--Did this complete representation harmonize with itself or some other natural product? _Spectator._--With itself, certainly. _Agent._--And this harmony was a work of art? _Spectator._--It must have been. _Agent._--We have denied to the opera the possession of a certain sort of truth. We have maintained that it is by no means faithful to what it professes to represent. But can we deny to it a certain interior truth, which arises from its completeness as a work of art? _Spectator._--When the opera is good, it creates a little world of its own, in which all proceeds according to fixed laws, which must be judged by its own laws, felt according to its own spirit. _Agent._--Does it not follow from this, that truth of nature and truth of art are two distinct things, and that the artist neither should nor may endeavor to give his work the air of a work of nature? _Spectator._--But yet it has so often the air of a work of nature. _Agent._--That I cannot deny. But may I on the other hand be equally frank? _Spectator._--Why not? our business is not now with compliments. _Agent._--I will then venture to affirm, that a work of art can seem to be a work of nature only to a wholly uncultivated spectator; such a one the artist appreciates and values indeed, though he stands on the lowest step. But, unfortunately, he can only be satisfied when the artist descends to his level; he will never rise with him, when, prompted by his genius, the true artist must take wing in order to complete the whole circle of his work. _Spectator._--Your remark is curious; but proceed. _Agent._--You would not let it pass unless you had yourself attained a higher step. _Spectator._--Let me now make trial, and take the place of questioner, in order to arrange and advance our subject. _Agent._--I shall like that better still. _Spectator._--You say that a work of art could appear as a work of nature only to an uncultivated person? _Agent._--Certainly. You remember the birds that tried to eat the painted cherries of the great master? _Spectator._--Now does not that show that the cherries were admirably painted? _Agent._--By no means. It rather convinces me that these connoisseurs were true sparrows.