He felt that the deep wisdom in his art which he had sought so far was found . But amid stern or lovely nature , in the perils of the forest or its overwhelming peacefulness , still there had been two phantoms , the companions of his way . Like all other men around whom an engrossing purpose wreathes itself , he was insulated from the mass of humankind . He had no aim , no pleasure , no sympathies , but what were ultimately connected with his art . Though gentle in manner and upright in intent and action , he did not possess kindly feelings ; his heart was cold : no living creature could be brought near enough to keep him warm . For these two beings , however , he had felt in its greatest intensity the sort of interest which always allied him to the subjects of his pencil . He had pried into their souls with his keenest insight and pictured the result upon their features with his utmost skill , so as barely to fall short of that standard which no genius ever reached , his own severe conception . He had caught from the duskiness of the future -- at least , so he fancied -- a fearful secret , and had obscurely revealed it on the portraits . So much of himself -- of his imagination and all other powers -- had been lavished on the study of Walter and Elinor that he almost regarded them as creations of his own , like the thousands with which he had peopled the realms of Picture . Therefore did they flit through the twilight of the woods , hover on the mist of waterfalls , look forth from the mirror of the lake , nor melt away in the noontide sun . They haunted his pictorial fancy , not as mockeries of life nor pale goblins of the dead , but in the guise of portraits , each with an unalterable expression which his magic had evoked from the caverns of the soul . He could not recross the Atlantic till he had again beheld the originals of those airy pictures . `` O glorious Art ! '' Thus mused the enthusiastic painter as he trod the street . `` Thou art the image of the Creator 's own . The innumerable forms that wander in nothingness start into being at thy beck . The dead live again ; thou recallest them to their old scenes and givest their gray shadows the lustre of a better life , at once earthly and immortal . Thou snatchest back the fleeting moments of history . With then there is no past , for at thy touch all that is great becomes for ever present , and illustrious men live through long ages in the visible performance of the very deeds which made them what they are . O potent Art !
XXXXX thou bringest the faintly-revealed past to stand in that narrow strip of sunlight which we call ` now , ' canst thou summon the shrouded future to meet her there ?
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