The pursuit of beauty, _per se_, may be purchased at the expense of character. But Leighton was always pulling himself up; and when he found himself too facile, too ornate, he resolutely set his mind to correct any tendency in that direction by fidelity to Nature, sometimes even to her ugly movements. Excess was not in his nature, which was curiously logical; his mind was swift, far-seeing; in debate he was admirable, always seeing the weak point of an argument at once, and "partie pris" was his abomination. A man so gifted in the essence and laws of form, so learned in the construction of the human frame, so deeply sensitive to line and movement as well as to structure, surely would have given to the world great works of sculpture. Indeed he did, but not enough! One regrets that--still one must accept the fact that form is but little cared for in this country, and Leighton sinned by reason of his love of form; by many he was called not a painter because he did not smear, did not trust to accidents, did not leave works half done--because he was sincere to his conviction that a work of art must be, to last, complete "ad unguem." The present craze for incompleteness, for sketches instead of pictures, for unripe instead of ripe fruit, must die as all false notions die; the best, the rightest will live; and when the present ephemeral fashion has worked itself out, the nobility of Leighton's works, his best, are certain to take their place in the estimation of those that know as surely as that they are good.