In the first place, it requires no interpreter between itself and the public;--what, for example, remains of a melody after a concert?
nothing but the recollection.

Poesy may excite admiration in the retirement of one's chamber; your nostrils are, as it were, reposing on the bouquet, though often you have still a difficulty in smelling anything.

But if once you give life to canvas, it is eternal." "Eternal is scarcely the proper word," remarked Wolston: "the celebrated fresco of Leonardo da Vinci, in the refectory of the Dominicans at Milan, is nothing but a confused mass of colors and figures." "I answer that by saying that the painting in question is only a fresco.

Besides, I use the word eternal in a modified or relative sense.

A painting is preserved from generation to generation, whilst its successive races of admirers are mingled with the dust.