Various

Great writers and literary tourists have occasionally been inspired to record the impressions of their saunterings among galleries and museums.

The most interesting of these, not necessarily professional, I have tried to bring together in the following pages.

My object has been not to make a selection of the greatest pictures in the world, although many that have that reputation will be found here, but rather to bring together those that have produced a powerful impression on great minds.

Consequently, when the reader is disturbed at the omission of some world-famous painting, I beg him to remember my plan and blame the great writers instead of me for neglecting his favourite.

My task has not been a light one. A few words of rapturous admiration are constantly to be met with in the pages of art-lovers, but a sympathetic study of a single work is rarely found. General comment of a given artist's work is also plentiful, while discriminating praise of individual canvases is scanty. The literary selection has, therefore, involved a great deal of research.

Of modern painters I have only included Turner and Rossetti.

and upon this point nearly every essayist and critic represented in these pages dwells.

such material as serves to illustrate some easily recognizable human trait.
It is almost needless to say that this book should not be read continuously. It should be taken in small doses, as it is

prince Siegfried, hero of the earliest literature of the Teutonic people,

Whenever you feel sad and lonely, if you will just find somebody sadder and lonelier than yourself and cheer them up, it will make you all right."