The humour of
the whole scene within is excellent. The stifling closeness, both of the
atmosphere and of the sermon, the wonderful content of the audience, the
"old fat woman," who
"purred with pleasure,
And thumb round thumb went twirling faster,
While she, to his periods keeping measure,
Maternally devoured the pastor;"
are represented by a few rapid touches that bring certain points of the
reality almost unpleasantly near. At length, unable to endure it longer,
he rushes out into the air. Objection may, probably, be made to the
mingling of the humorous, even the ridiculous, with the serious; at
least, in a work of art like this, where they must be brought into such
close proximity. But are not these things as closely connected in the
world as they can be in any representation of it? Surely there are few
who have never had occasion to attempt to reconcile the thought of the
two in their own minds. Nor can there be anything human that is not, in
some connexion or other, admissible into art. The widest idea of art
must comprehend all things. A work of this kind must, like God's world,
in which he sends rain on the just and on the unjust, be taken as a
whole and in regard to its design.
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