Naturally enough I did not altogether escape the thraldom of the drawing-master, and as years went on I made a really serious effort to study at an art school under the Kensington system, which I must confess I believe to be positively prejudicial to a young artist possessing imagination and originality. The late Lord Beaconsfield made one of his characters in "Lothair" declare that "critics are those who have failed in literature and art." Whether this is true as to the art critics, or that the dramatic critic is generally a disappointed playwright, it must in truth be said that drawing-masters are nearly always those who have failed in art. I can remember one gentleman who was the especial terror of my youth. I can see him now going his rounds along the chilly corridor, where, perhaps, one had been placed to draw something "from the flat." After years and years of practice at this rubbish, he would halt beside you, look at your work in a perfunctory manner, and with a dexterity which appalled you until you reflected that he had been doing the same thing exactly, and nothing else, for perhaps a decade, he would draw in a section of a leaf, and if, as in my case, you happened to have a pretty sister attending the ladies' class in the school, he would add leaf to leaf until your whole paper was covered with his mechanical handiwork, in order to have a little extra conversation with you, although, I need scarcely add, it was not exclusively confined to the subject of art. This sort of thing was called "instruction in freehand drawing," and had to be endured and persisted in for months and months. Freehand! Shade of Apelles! What is there free in squinting and measuring, and feebly touching in and fiercely rubbing out a collection of straggling mechanical pencil lines on a piece of paper pinned on to a hard board, which after a few weeks becomes nothing but a confused jumble of fingermarks?