might have devoted himself to the joys of the collector, of the sportsman, of the ambitious _parvenu_. Instead of doing so, he made amusement and enjoyment subordinate to work for the benefit of others. He had not the hardness and narrowness of people whose career has been one of victory over the natural pleasures and innocent impulses of an indolent race. ‘I don’t think I ever came across any other self-made man who had so entirely got the chill of poverty out of his bones,’ Dr. Percival wrote to Mr. Smiles. His geniality and unselfishness soften the edges of his iron will and determination. People may think that so much of the material and force that make greatness, might have been better employed in work of a nobler tone—in science, literature, law, or art. Mr. Moore took the only career that was open to him, the career that was most distinctly in contrast with the pastoral life to which he was bred. He had no education in his youth, none lay within his reach in the Cumbrian valley where he was born. With the chances of Dr. Whewell he might have been a Whewell. With an opening in the East, he might have been, if not a Clive, a Meadows Taylor. As it happened, the choice lay between the existence of a farm labourer and that of a tradesman.” CHAPTER XI. ARTISTS AND WRITERS. MEN who are not supposed to be mercenary often make a great deal of money. Most of our artists rose from very humble beginnings. Turner was the son of a hair-dresser. Wilkie was desperately poor; so was Barry; and William Etty, that great colourist, was the son of a baker in York—was bound apprentice, wholly against his will, to a printer in Hull; but he released himself from the shackles of so uncongenial a pursuit. He was greatly self-taught, for the help he derived for a hundred guineas, as a private pupil of Sir Thomas Lawrence, seems rather to have baffled him with despair; yet he became the most surprising and effective flesh-painter of his age. The nude style of his figures has often been a topic of remark with a certain order of critics. Etty himself was wont to say, “‘To the pure in heart, all things are pure.’ My aim in all my great pictures has been to paint some great moral on the heart.” He lived, in 1849, to find all his great works—130 pictures—in the great room of the Society of Arts: he died that year. By the universal acclamation of artists he is regarded as our English Titian, and some claim for him a still higher place, for his canvases have not only the wonderful colour of that master, but the splendour of Paul Veronese. He died in his beloved and native city of York; and the poor baker’s boy, by his industry and genius, had become the master of a considerable fortune.