Well, you will ask, why are you going on in this argumentative style?
Who doubts you? Let me tell you, then, a little fragment of my
experience. We saw this group of statuary the last thing before
dinner, after a most fatiguing forenoon of sightseeing, when we were
both tired and hungry,--a most unpropitious time, certainly,--and yet
it enchanted our whole company; what is more, it made us all cry--a
fact of which I am not ashamed, yet. But, only the next day, when I
was expressing my admiration to an artist, who is one of the
authorities, and knows all that is proper to be admired, I was met
with,--
"O, you have seen that, have you? Shocking thing! Miserable
taste--miserable!"
"Dear me," said I, with apprehension, "what is the matter with it?"
"0," said he, "melodramatic, melodramatic--terribly so!"
I was so appalled by this word, of whose meaning I had not a very
clear idea, that I dropped the defence at once, and determined to
reconsider my tears. To have been actually made to cry by a thing that
was melodramatic, was a distressing consideration. Seriously, however,
on reconsidering the objection, I see no sense in it.
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