It is painful to think how soon the paintings of Raphael, and Titian,
and Correggio, and other illustrious men, will perish and pass away.
“How long,” said Napoleon to David, “will a picture last?” “About four
or five hundred years--a fine immortality!” The poet multiplies his
works by means of a cheap material; and Homer, and Virgil, and Dante,
and Tasso, and Moliere, and Milton, and Shakspeare, may bid oblivion
defiance; the sculptor impresses his conceptions on metal or on marble,
and expects to survive the wreck of nations, or the wrongs of time; but
the painter commits to perishable cloth or wood, the visions of his
fancy, and dies in the certain assurance that the life of his works will
be but short in the land they adorn.