"But you have not told us," said Leonardo da Vinci, on observing that Piombino was satisfied, "in what consists this long debated notion which we call the fine ideal?" "By the fine ideal," said Michael Angelo. "I presume we both understand not the work of art itself, but the conception out of which it springs. Art is the exercise of an imitative faculty upon visible things; but fine art is the transcendental idea entertained after the study of nature, and transferred from the mind itself to the canvas or marble." "How is that idea acquired?" asked Leonardo. "The study of unsophisticated nature yields the ideal, or similitude of things seen; and this study, impressing the recollection, affords in due time a conception of abstract beauty itself to curious and sensitive minds." "By what process can such conception be achieved?" "Alas! to make real progress in this enterprise demands, on setting out, the possession of the finest faculties; powers so transcendental as few are able to value. Such is, however, the prospect of all who deserve success in the highest departments of knowledge." "Let us suppose one to be thus endowed; what then?" "Well, let him go forth in a genial mood and make himself master of the real; this done, he will have observed the groupings of inanimate forms, and have learned nature's failures and successes in giving features to the world. He will then ask what each feature would express, whether it be not something spiritual which lies deeper than the outer shape. Does the human face alone give utterance through its lineaments to thought and feeling? are not those of the landscape also pregnant with meaning?" From the Paris Journal des Debats. THE MEETING OF THE VEGETARIANS.