And this goes on day after day with a protracted strain upon the
limbs, the senses and the brain, until real injury sometimes ensues.
After traversing almost without a pause the great art-palaces of
Munich, Brussels, Antwerp, The Hague and all the minor ones on the
route, on reaching Amsterdam, with its inexhaustible picture-shows, I
had got to the point where I sat down amidst the Rembrandts, forced to
declare that I would rather look at so much wall-paper of a good
pattern. This is utter folly. One cardinal rule in seeking either
pleasure or profit is not to tire one's self. When time is limited and
the opportunity may never recur, the temptation is almost
overpowering: this is our only chance--we must not lose it. But it
_is_ lost if we overtask the perceptions and carry away no idea with
us: there is no gain, and positive harm. No one new to galleries
should look at pictures for more than an hour together, and I think
that one who knows and cares much about them will not wish to do so
for more than double that time. We learn by degrees to go through a
gallery much more rapidly than at first, for unless we have adopted
some plan of selection we begin by looking at every picture.
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