He had thirsted for average praise in vain. A hand had taken him, and placed him at the top of the tree. He retired abruptly, or he would have burst into tears. He ran to his mother. “Mother,” said he, “I am a painter; I always thought so at bottom, but I suppose it is the height of my ideas makes me discontented with my work.” “What has happened?' “There is a critic in my room. I had no idea there was a critic in the creation, and there is one in my room. “Has he bought your picture, my poor boy?” said Mrs. Gatty, distrustfully. To her surprise he replied: “Yes! he has got it; only eighty pounds for an immortal picture.” Mrs. Gatty was overjoyed, Gatty was a little sad; but, reviving, he professed himself glad; the picture was going to a judge. “It is not much money,” said he, “but the man has spoken words that are ten thousand pounds to me.” He returned to the room; his visitor, hat in hand, was about to go; a few words were spoken about the art of painting, this led to a conversation, and then to a short discussion. The newcomer soon showed Mr. Charles Gatty his ignorance of facts. This man had sat quietly before a multitude of great pictures, new and old, in England. He cooled down Charles Gatty, Esq., monopolist of nature and truth. He quoted to him thirty painters in Germany, who paint every stroke of a landscape in the open air, and forty in various nations who had done it in times past. “You, sir,” he went on, “appear to hang on the skirts of a certain clique, who handle the brush well, but draw ill, and look at nature through the spectacles of certain ignorant painters who spoiled canvas four hundred years ago. “Go no further in that direction. “Those boys, like all quacks, have one great truth which they disfigure with more than one falsehood. “Hold fast their truth, which is a truth the world has always possessed, though its practice has been confined to the honest and laborious few. “Eschew their want of mind and taste. “Shrink with horror from that profane _culte de laideur,_ that 'love of the lopsided,' they have recovered from the foul receptacles of decayed art.” He reminded him further, that “Art is not imitation, but illusion; that a plumber and glazier of our day and a medieval painter are more alike than any two representatives of general styles that can be found; and for the same reason, namely, that with each of these art is in its infancy; these two sets of bunglers have not learned how to produce the illusions of art.” To all this he added a few words of compliment on the mind, as well as mechanical dexterity, of the purchased picture, bade him good morning, and glided away like a passing sunbeam. “A mother's blessing is a great thing to have, and to deserve,” said Mrs. Gatty, who had rejoined her son. “It is, indeed,” said Charles. He could not help being struck by the coincidence. He had made a sacrifice to his mother, and in a few hours one of his troubles had melted away.