And when the question was further put--granted that the artist has the gift of seeing beauty in nature to which others are blind, is his picture Art in proportion as he truthfully records the beauty of the nature that he sees? Mr. Thayer answered, “Yes. Everything in art, in poetry, music, sculpture, or painting, however fantastic it looks to people who are not far enough on that road, is nothing but truth-telling, true reporting of one or another of the great facts of nature--of the universe.” The ability to see, as Thayer suggests, is the very foundation of the artist’s power. It is this power of seeing which enables him to discover truth and beauty, and it is the skill of the trained master which enables him to reproduce these for the delight and inspiration of his fellows. That men are endowed by inheritance with varying degrees of mental power is a self-evident fact. No one will dispute this; it comes within our common experience. Providence has been lavish in the bestowal of extraordinary powers upon the few, but it remains everlastingly true that even with these success depends upon effort. Nothing is more fully established than this truism. The records of successful men in all periods and in every avenue of life bear testimony to this fact. To the artist, seeing is the all important thing, and to him there is no mystery either in the development of this power or in the result obtained. To him it is simply a matter of logical evolution, the result of the day’s work well done. He begins his career as a student by laboriously copying nature. His first studies are, as a rule, hard and unsympathetic. I have not discovered an exception to this rule. In the beginning the art student does not even see colour in its fullness and beauty. Gradually he acquires greater power of perception. He discovers beautiful and harmonious colours in nature which were unseen at first. He realizes the exquisite grace of line to be found on every hand but unperceived before--the movement, charm, and beauty of natural forms. New beauties are revealed from day to day; new harmonies are seen and felt. Presently the inharmonious becomes distasteful; the ugly, intolerable; the offensive, a distress. He comes into the presence of nature with a new vision. Her beauties are revealed to him. He feels a thrill in the love he bears for the exceptional and profound beauty of an evening sky or a grey day. He never talks about inspiration or soul, although he has searched out the very soul of the landscape. He simply seeks with every power at his command, as Constable, borrowing the thought from Wordsworth, expressed it, “to give ‘to one brief moment caught from fleeting time’ a lasting and sober existence, and to render permanent many of those splendid but evanescent Exhibitions which are ever occurring in the endless varieties of Nature.”