So, also, a most glorious picture here. The Trial of John Huss before
the Council of Constance, by Lessing--one of the few things I have
seen in painting which have had power deeply to affect me. I have it
not in my heart to criticize it as a mere piece of coloring and
finish, though in these respects I thought it had great merits. But
the picture had the power, which all high art must have, of rebuking
and silencing these minor inquiries in the solemnity of its
_morale_. I believe the highest painter often to be the subject
of a sort of inspiration, by which his works have a vitality of
suggestion, so that they sometimes bring to the beholder even more
than he himself conceived when he created them. In this picture, the
idea that most impressed me was, the representation of that more
refined and subtle torture of martyrdom which consists in the
incertitude and weakness of an individual against whom is arrayed the
whole weight of the religious community. If against the martyr only
the worldly and dissolute stood arrayed, he could bear it; but when
the church, claiming to be the visible representative of Christ, casts
him out; when multitudes of pious and holy souls, as yet unenlightened
in their piety, look on him with horror as an infidel and blasphemer,
--then comes the very wrench of the rack.
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