see our error, and spend the rest of our lives in regretting that we did not finish it properly when we were about it. We can execute only a part; we see the whole of nature or of a picture at once. _Hinc illæ lachrymæ._ The English grasp at this whole—nothing less interests or contents them; and, in aiming at too much, they miss their object altogether. A French artist, on the contrary, has none of this uneasy, anxious feeling—of this desire to master the whole of his subject, and anticipate his good fortune at a blow—of this _massing_ and concentrating principle. He takes the thing more easy and rationally. He has none of the mental qualms, the nervous agitation, the wild, desperate plunges and convulsive throes of the English artist. He does not set off headlong without knowing where he is going, and find himself up to the neck in all sorts of difficulties and absurdities, from impatience to begin and have the matter off his mind (as if it were an evil conscience); but takes time to consider, arranges his plans, gets in his outline and his distances, and lays a foundation before he attempts a superstructure which he may have to pull in pieces again, or let it remain—a monument of his folly. _He looks before he leaps_, which is contrary to the true blindfold English rule; and I should think that we had invented this proverb from seeing so many fatal examples of the violation of it. Suppose he undertakes to make a copy of a picture: he first looks at it, and sees what it is. He does not make his sketch all black or all white, because one part of it is so, and because he cannot alter an idea he has once got into his head and must always run into extremes, but varies his tints (strange as it may seem) from green to red, from orange-tawny to yellow, from grey to brown, according as they vary in the original. He sees no inconsistency, no forfeiture of a principle, in this (any more than Mr. Southey in the change of the colours of his coat), but a great deal of right reason, and indeed an absolute necessity for it, if he wishes to succeed in what he is about. This is the last thing in an Englishman’s thoughts: he only wishes to have his own way, though it ends in defeat and ruin—strives hard to do what he is sensible he cannot—or, if he finds he can, gives over and leaves the matter short of a triumphant conclusion, which is too flattering an idea for him to indulge in. The French artist proceeds with due deliberation, and bit by bit. He takes some one part—a hand, an eye, a piece of drapery, an object in the back-ground—and finishes it carefully; then another, and so on to the end. When he has gone through every part, his picture is done: there is nothing more that he can add to it; it is a numerical calculation, and there are only so many items in the account. An Englishman may go on _slobbering_ his over for the hundredth time, and be no nearer than when he began. As he tries to