_Sir Joshua and Holbein_, § 6 _n._ * * * * * There is, indeed, perhaps, no greater sign of innate and real vulgarity of mind or defective education than the want of power to understand the universality of the ideal truth; the absence of sympathy with the colossal grasp of those intellects, which have in them so much of divine, that nothing is small to them, nothing large; but with equal and unoffended vision they take in the sum of the world,—Straw Street[#] and the seventh heaven,—in the same instant. [#] Dante, _Paradiso_, x. 133-34. A certain portion of this divine spirit is visible even in the lower examples of all the true men; it is, indeed, perhaps, the clearest test of their belonging to the true and great group, that they are continually touching what to the multitude appear vulgarities. The higher a man stands, the more the word "vulgar" becomes unintelligible to him. Vulgar? what, that poor farmer’s girl of William Hunt’s, bred in the stable, putting on her Sunday gown, and pinning her best cap, out of the green and red pin-cushion! Not so; she may be straight on the road to those high heavens, and may shine hereafter as one of the stars in the firmament for ever. Nay, even that lady in the satin bodice, with her arm laid over a balustrade to show it, and her eyes turned up to heaven to show them; and the sportsman waving his rifle for the terror of beasts, and displaying his perfect dress for the delight of men, are kept, by the very misery and vanity of them, in the thoughts of a great painter, at a sorrowful level, somewhat above vulgarity. It is only when the minor painter takes them on his easel, that they become things for the universe to be ashamed of. We may dismiss this matter of vulgarity in plain and few words, at least as far as regards art. There is never vulgarity in a _whole_ truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or in affectation. _Modern Painters,_ _vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. vii._ § 9. * * * * *