"Perhaps that is what I do mean," answered his friend; "but I believe the truth is, Manners, that you and I are both far behind in the elegant charlatanism of dilettanteship. Why, I have heard a man go on by the hour with the _copia fandi_ of a Cicero about a picture, the beauties of which he no more understood than the frame in which it was placed. These men's minds are like a yard measure, a thing on which a multitude of figures are written down, without the slightest use till they are properly applied by some one else. When I am seeing anything fine, heaven deliver me from the proximity of a walking dictionary of technical terms!" "They are very useful things in their way, Edward," answered Isadore; "and only think, if these men can be so eloquent about things that they do not feel, solely upon the strength of their jargon, how much more eloquent you, who do feel them, would be, if you had the jargon too." She spoke jestingly; but De Vaux, whose spleen had been somewhat excited, answered quickly, "I do not know, Isadore--I do not know. I very often think that a great acquaintance with the jargon of art tends to destroy the feeling for it. I have heard of a great critic, who, on viewing the Apollo of Belvidere, declared that had the lip been a hair's breadth longer, the god would have been lost. This was all very connoisseurish and very true, no doubt; but, depend upon it, that man felt the beauties of the immortal statue a thousand times more, whose only exclamation on seeing it was, 'Good God!' I would rather have the fresh feelings of even ignorance itself than the tutored and mechanical taste that measures the cheek-bones of a Venus, gauges the depth of colour in a Claude, or feels the edges of a book instead of looking into the inside." "Yes, but consider, Edward," said Marian, who since she entered the room had been sitting silent at the breakfast-table, "it surely does not follow that because we understand a thing well, we lose our first and natural taste for it. If I could paint like Claude or Poussin, I surely should not take less pleasure in a beautiful landscape." "NO, Marian," exclaimed Miss Falkland, well knowing that De Vaux would not support his sarcasms very vigorously against his cousin, "no; but, depend upon it, no one who could paint like Claude or Poussin would talk like a connoisseur."