This is one clew to the reading of George Fuller’s life as an artist; that, at the call of what seemed to him to be his duty, he gave up the single-aimed pursuit of the treasure where his heart lay; disregarded, as the world would say, the chances of a lifetime for the dull monotony of a life of arduous routine, and yet, despite the sacrifice, more probably because of it, found his ideal after all. But there is another clew. Fuller’s ideal and his craving after artistic expression were bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, an integral, inseparable part of himself. They did not need stimulating any more than a healthy appetite, were so normally a part of him as to preserve their natural functions under any circumstances of life. This is not the way in which artistic proclivities always reveal themselves. In some cases the art instinct is not dissimilar to a taste in waistcoats; double-breasted to-day, to-morrow, single; sprigged, plain, coloured, sober, to meet the occasions of the moment; put off as easily as put on; a habit rather than an instinct. This is the trivial, masquerading side of art, so detestable in a solid world of facts; a conscienceless sniffing of the air for change of fashion, that reminds one of the jackdaw with a few peacock feathers in his tail, strutting around and trying to deceive us into recognizing his superiority to fowls of ordinary degree. I doubt if the true artist ever humbled himself to proclaim his worth, and nothing more proclaims his worth than his beautiful humility. It was so, I am sure we may believe, in Fuller’s case. He was not even conscious of his power in the way that smaller men of less character are: only conscious of something that he longed to do and would do in time, if life were spared, notwithstanding the claims upon his attention of other and more mundane matters. The beauty of such a process of evolution is all from within: natural, like the bursting of the honeysuckle into fragrance and blossom over waste, dry places; not to be judged by what it might have been in other soil and climate, but fulfilling its special function of beauty through the inherent mystery of its own independent force.