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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott: exciting the human imagination, by presenting to it pleasing or
sublime images of ideal scenes--yet the one conveying itself
through the ears to the understanding, and the other applying
itself only to the eyes, the subjects which are best suited to
the bard or tale-teller are often totally unfit for painting,
where the artist must present in a single glance all that his art
has power to tell us. The artist can neither recapitulate the
past nor intimate the future. The single NOW is all which he can
present; and hence, unquestionably, many subjects which delight
us in poetry or in narrative, whether real or fictitious, cannot
with advantage be transferred to the canvas.
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