I wonder how the great artists worked, and under what circumstances they threw aside the implements of their craft, impatient of all but the throb of life itself? Could Raphael paint Madonnas the week of his betrothal? Did Thackeray write a chapter the day his daughter was born? Did Plato philosophise freely when he was in love? Were there interruptions in the world's great revolutions, histories, dramas, reforms, poems, and marbles when their creators fell for a brief moment under the spell of the little blind tyrant who makes slaves of us all? It must have been so. Your chronometer heart, on whose pulsations you can reckon as on the procession of the equinoxes, never gave anything to the world unless it were a system of diet, or something quite uncoloured and unglorified by the imagination. Chapter XX. A canticle to Jane. There are many donkeys owned in these nooks among the hills, and some of the thriftier families keep donkey-chairs (or 'cheers,' as they call them) to let to the casual summer visitor. This vehicle is a regular Bath chair, into which the donkey is harnessed. Some of them have a tiny driver's seat, where a small lad sits beating and berating the donkey for the incumbent, generally a decrepit dowager from London. Other chairs are minus this absurd coachman's perch, and in this sort I take my daily drives. I hire the miniature chariot from an old woman who dwells at the top of Gorse Hill, and who charges one and fourpence the hour, It is a little more when she fetches the donkey to the door, or when the weather is wet or the day is very warm, or there is an unusual breeze blowing, or I wish to go round the hills; but under ordinary circumstances, which may at any time occur, but which never do, one and four the hour. It is only a shilling, if you have the boy to drive you; but, of course, if you drive yourself, you throw the boy out of employment, and have to pay extra. It was in this fashion and on these elastic terms that I first met you, Jane, and this chapter shall be sacred to you! Jane the long-eared, Jane the iron-jawed, Jane the stubborn, Jane donkeyer than other donkeys,--in a word, MULIER! It may be that Jane has made her bow to the public before this. If she has ever come into close relation with man or woman possessed of the instinct of self-expression, then this is certainly not her first appearance in print, for no human being could know Jane and fail to mention her. Pause, Jane,--this you will do gladly, I am sure, since pausing is the one accomplishment to which you lend yourself with special energy,--pause, Jane, while I sing a canticle to your character. Jane is a tiny--person, I was about to say, for she has so strong an individuality that I can scarcely think of her as less than human--Jane is a tiny, solemn creature, looking all docility and decorum, with long hair of a subdued tan colour, very much worn off in patches, I fear, by the offending toe of man.