With a person so constituted, the delicate tastes and sensibilities are like to be indulged in a very high degree. William Edgerton loved music and all the quiet arts. Painting was his particular delight. He himself sketched with great spirit. He had the happy eye for the tout ensemble in a fine landscape. He knew exactly how much to take in and what to leave out, in the delineation of a lovely scene. This is a happy talent for discrimination which the ordinary artist does not possess. It is the capacity which, in the case of orators and poets, informs them of the precise moment when they should stop. It is the happiest sort of judgment, since, though the artist may be neither very excellent in drawing, nor very felicitous in color, it enables him always to bestow a certain propriety on his picture which compensates, to a certain degree, for inferiority in other respects. To know how to grasp objects with spirit, and bestow them with a due regard to mutual dependence, is one of the most exquisite faculties of the landscape-painter. William Edgerton, had he been forced by necessity to have made the art of painting his profession would have made for himself a reputation of no inferior kind. But amateur art, like amateur literature, rarely produces any admirable fruits. Complete success only attends the devotee to the muse. The worship must be exclusive at her altar; the attendance constant and unremitting. There must be no partial, no divided homage. She is a jealous mistress, like all the rest. The lover of her charms, if he would secure her smiles, must be a professor at her shrine. He can not come and go at pleasure. She resents such impertinence by neglect. In plain terms, the fine arts must be made a business by those who desire their favor. Like law, divinity, physic, they constitute a profession of their own; require the same diligent endeavor, close study, fond pursuit! William Edgerton loved painting, but his business was the law. He loved painting too much to love his profession. He gave too much of his time to the law to be a successful painter--too much time to painting to be a lawyer. He was nothing! At the bar he never rose a step after the first day, when, together, we appeared in our mutual maiden case; and contenting himself with the occasional execution of a landscape, sketchy and bold, but without finish, he remained in that nether-land of public consideration, unable to grasp the certainties of either pursuit at which he nevertheless was constantly striving; striving, however, with that qualified degree of effort, which, if it never could secure the prize, never could fatigue him much with the endeavor to do so.