"Take me! if I outlived the patriarchs,
I could but paint those features o'er and o'er.
Lo! that is done!"
And thus was finished in a moment of ecstasy, a life crowned resplendently by the twin powers of genius and sentiment. The artist's labor of love had reached its goal on earth, and the heaven lay beyond! The cold and unappreciative world may call these instances exaggerated, and violently inimical to art, since by the spirit succumbing wholly to that indefinable power of blissful emotion, the purpose and work of life are suddenly wrecked. But as the noblest ships are stranded in a single moment, going down in the waters with only a stifled cry, so have the children and worshipers of genius sunk under the weight of emotion with more of a welcome to death than a sigh of regret.
