William Crawford was very happy in the painting-room where the greater part of his life was spent. What man can be so happy as the triumphant artist?--convinced of the innocence and purity of his triumphs, assured of being remembered when all other labourers are forgotten, knowing that his glory will be revealed to posterity by no musty records written by a stranger, but by his own handiwork, instinct with his own soul, revealing himself in a language that needs no translation, and is almost as familiar to the savage as to the _savant_, so nearly does it copy nature. Florence thought it a very hard thing that her father would not take her to perpetual parties, and grumbled sorely at being sent under convoy of any grumpy old chaperone who might be available; but on this matter the painter very rarely gave way. "Do you know how long art is, as compared to a man's life?" he asked. "Can you guess what Raffaelle might have been if he had lived to be as old as Titian? If there is any special strength in my hand, Flo, it is because in twenty years I have worked as hard as most men work in forty. When I paid fifteen shillings a week for my lodgings my landlord grumbled because I kept my fire in all night, in order that I might be at work before daybreak. I don't make any merit of having worked hard, you know, my dear. I have worked because my work pleased me; and you would never believe how little I ever thought of the fame or money that success would bring me. I don't think your real artist ever sets much value upon the price of his labour; he may want money as much as any other man, and of course he is glad to get it; but it is the triumph of his art that he rejoices in, rather than any personal success. The creation of his work is in itself happiness, and would be though his picture were foredoomed to melt and vanish under his hand at the moment of its completion. I would answer for it that Michael Angelo enjoyed modelling his statue of snow quite as much as if he had been putting the finishing touches of his chisel to the fairest marble that ever grew into life under the craftsman's hand, to receive a soul from the last touch of the master. Don't worry me about parties, Flo. I will pay as many milliner's bills as you like, and I'll paint you in all your prettiest dresses, and your most bewitching attitudes, and give you the price of your beauty for pocket-money; but I won't go to be crushed to death upon staircases, or martyred in the act of fetching an ice. I won't go to people who only want to see what the painter of Aspasia is like, as if I must needs be like something different from my fellow-men, and who will think me an insignificant-looking fellow, with very little to say for myself. What should I have to say to people who don't know the A B C of the language to the study of which I have given my life?"