How many out of the multitude really, if we could test them, care one jot for the Elgin Marbles, for the Demeter of Knidos, for the vault of the Sistine Chapel?--very few. Really great things never can be accepted by the commonplace. How should they be? for to understand the highest in music, in architecture, sculpture, or painting, the observer or listener must have a spark in his constitution which is a portion of the flame that burned white heat in the soul of the conceiver. How can such an attitude of intimate sympathy belong to the many? It never has, and probably never will. Great men are rare, and those who are mentally or organically made to comprehend them are rare also. The great can afford to wait because they are immortal. In all one's dealings with Leighton what did one find? a noble nature, restrained, charitable, in earnest; and if in many discussions as to the desirability of certain events, certain compromises, certain acts of conformity, one did not agree with Leighton, one knew "au fond" that the attitude was quite logical, not hastily arrived at, and the position taken up was to be strenuously held: and it was that power of consistency which made Leighton so trustworthy. He was fearless when his principles were touched, he was loyal to his associates in the Academy even if he did not see eye to eye with them, and he was loyal to his art and to his friends. If Leighton had chosen politics for his career he would probably have been Prime Minister, just as Burne-Jones might have been Archbishop of Canterbury had he continued his early and very remarkable theological studies. All really great men have endless possibilities. It is more or less chance which decides the direction of ability, which, once discovered, forcibly, dominantly present, must find opportunities for its highest development and achievement in the tenure of the goal. It was ability and natural gifts that made Leighton great, industry that nourished his greatness, and stability to principle which made it lasting in his lifetime, and must for all time stamp his work. The thing that really engages one's interest about a great man is not so much his "technique" as his general disposition and character, which forms for itself a suitable "technique" by which his achievements have been manifested. Should any one by-and-by describe the "technique" of Joachim, the supreme violinist, he would probably interest a few, but in reality he would say nothing really valuable, excepting inasmuch as he touched upon first principles. The "modus operandi" of an artist's life is moulded by his personal aims, the means are those by which he found his own way of stating them; and one doubts very much if, after all, the points which differentiate one man's work from