Nature wears this air of impartiality, because her figures are only zeros, deriving all their significance from their position. We do not require a like impartiality in the artist, because what he is to give is not Nature, but what Nature inspires. His endeavor to be impartial would result only in giving us his opinions or the opinions of others, instead of the utterance of the oracle. For Nature hides her secret, not by silence, but in a Babel of sweet voices, heard by each according to the fineness of his sense: by one as mere noise, by another as a jangle of pleasing sounds, by the artist as harmony. They are all of them Nature's voices;--he adds nothing and omits nothing, but hears with a preoccupied attention, the justification being that his hearing is thus most complete, as one who understands a language seizes the sense of words rapidly spoken better than he who from less acquaintance with it strives to follow all the sounds. The test of "truth," therefore, in the sense of fact, is insufficient. The question is, Truth for whom? Not for a child or a savage. If we were to show a fine landscape to a Hottentot, it would be a mistake to say he saw it, though the image might be demonstrable on the retina of his eye. He would not see what we mean when we speak of it, any more than we should see the footstep on the ground or hear the stirring in the grass that is plain enough to him, and hits our organs, too, though we are not trained to perceive it. If the test of merit be the production of a likeness to something we see, then the artist should know no more of Nature than we do. But then, though it may surprise us into momentary admiration to recognize familiar things in this translation,--just as common talk sounds finer in a foreign tongue,--yet it is but for a time, and then the inevitable limitations of the counterfeit come in,--its narrowness and fixity,--crude paint for sunbeams, cold and colorless stone for the living form. The only test of a work of Art is, how far it will carry us,--not any comparison by the yardstick. We demand to be raised above our habitual point of view, and be made aware of a deeper interest than we knew of. It is in hope of this alone that we pardon the necessary shortcoming of the means. This deeper interest has its root in nothing arbitrary, or personal to the artist. It is not inventing something finer than Nature, but seeing more truly what Nature shows, that makes the artistic faculty. This is the lesson taught by the history of Art. Take it up where you will, this history is nothing but the successive unfolding of a truer conception of Nature, only speaking here the language of form and color, instead of words. It is this that lies at the bottom of all its revolutions, and appears in its downfall as well as in its prosperity.