English, or rather Irish fashion. We not only grudge the labour of beginning, but we give up, for the same reason, when we are near touching the goal of success; and to save a few last touches leave a work unfinished, and an object unattained. The immediate process, the daily gradual improvement, the completion of parts giving us no pleasure, we strain at the whole result; we wish to have it done, and in our anxiety to have it off our hands, say it will do, and lose the benefit of all our labour by grudging a little more, and not commanding a little patience. In a day or two, suppose, a copy of a fine Titian would be as complete as we could make it the prospect of this so enchants us that we skip the intermediate days, see no great use in going on with it, fancy that we may spoil it, and in order to have the job done, take it home with us, when we immediately see our error, and spend the rest of our lives in repenting that we did not finish it properly at the time. We see the whole of nature or of a picture at once; we only do a part: Hinc ille lachrymæ. A French artist, on the contrary, has none of this uneasy, anxious feeling, of this desire to grasp the whole of his subject, and anticipate his good fortune at a blow, of this massing and concentrating principle.

He takes the thing more easily and rationally. Suppose he undertakes to copy a picture, he looks at it and copies it bit by bit. He does not set off headlong without knowing where he is going, or plunge into all sorts of difficulties and absurdities, from impatience to begin and thinking that "no sooner said than done," but takes time to consider, lays his plans, gets in his outline and his distances, and lays a foundation before he attempts a superstructure which he may have to pull to pieces again. He looks before he leaps, which is contrary to the true blindfold English principle; and I should think that we had invented this proverb from seeing so many fatal examples of the neglect of it. He does not make the picture all black or all white, because one part of it is so, and because he cannot alter an idea he has once got into his head and must always run into extremes, but varies from green to red, from orange tawney to yellow, from grey to brown, according as they vary in the original: he sees no inconsistency or forfeiture of a principle in this, but a great deal of right reason, and indeed an absolute necessity if he wishes to succeed in what he is about. This is the last thing an Englishman thinks of: he only wants to have his own way, though it ends in defeat and ruin: he sets about a thing

which he has little prospect of accomplishing, and if he finds he can do it, gives it over and leaves the matter short of success, which is too agreeable an idea for him to indulge in. The French artist proceeds bit by bit. He takes one part, a hand, a piece of drapery, a part of the back-ground and finishes it carefully, then another, and so on to the end. He does not from a childish impatience, when he is near the conclusion, destroy the effect of the whole by leaving some one part eminently defective, nor fly from what he is about to some thing else that catches his eye, neglecting the one and spoiling the other. He is constrained by mastery, by the mastery of common sense and pleasurable feeling. He is in no hurry to finish, for he has a satisfaction in the work, and touches and retouches, perhaps a single head, day after day and week after week, without repining, uneasiness or apparent progress. The very

lightness and indifference of his feelings renders him patient and laborious: an Englishman, whatever he is about or undertakes, is as if he was carrying a heavy load that oppresses both his body and mind, and which he is anxious to throw down. A Frenchman's hopes or fears are not excited to that pitch of intolerable agony that compels him, in mere compassion to himself,

to bring the question to a speedy issue, even to the loss of his object; he is calm, easy, and indifferent, and can take his time and make the most of his advantages with impunity. Pleased with himself, he is pleased with whatever occupies his attention nearly alike. It is the same to him whether he paints an angel or a joint-stool; it is the same to him whether it is landscape or history: it is he who paints it, that is sufficient. Nothing puts him out of conceit with his work, for nothing puts him out of conceit with himself. This self-complacency produces admirable patience and docility in certain particulars, besides charity and toleration towards others. I remember a ludicrous instance of this deliberate process, in a young French artist who was copying the Titian's Mistress in the Louvre, some twenty years ago. After getting it in chalk-lines, one would think he would have been attracted to the face, that heaven of beauty which makes a sunshine in the shady place, or to some part of the poetry of the picture; instead of which he began to finish a square he had marked out in the right-hand corner of the picture. He set to work like a cabinet-maker or an engraver, and seemed to have no sympathy with the soul of the picture. Indeed, to a Frenchman there is no dis

tinction between the great and the little, the pleasurable and the painful; the utmost he arrives at a conception of is the indifferent and the light. Another young man, at the time I speak of, was for eleven weeks (I think it was) daily employed in making a black-lead pencil drawing of a small Leonardo; he sat crosslegged on a rail to do it, kept his hat on, rose up, went to the fire to warm himself, talked constantly of the excellence of the different masters-Titian for colour, Raphael for expression, Poussin for composition-all being alike to him provided there was a word to express it, for all he thought about was his own harangue; and, having consulted some friend on his progress, he returned to perfectionate,' as he called it, his copy. This would drive an Englishman mad or stupid. The perseverance and the indifference, the labour without impulse, the attention to the parts in succession, and disregard of the whole together, are to him absolutely inconceivable. A Frenchman only exists in his present sensations, and provided he is left free to these as they arise, he cares about nothing farther, looking neither backward nor forward. With all this affectation and artifice, there is on this account a kind of simplicity and nature about them after all.