He was soon dressed, and standing at the open window. How familiar the scene was to him. There was the circular space, with its grass-grown walks, and the little obelisk in the centre, surrounded by pleasant white houses with pretty gardens; yonder the stately schoolhouse, from whose open windows the singing of the boys rang out so distinctly upon the quiet of the Sabbath morning, that he fancied he could distinguish the words of the hymn. On the right hand, peering between the houses, and rising above their roofs, appeared the dark green foliage of the huge trees in the royal park, and far away on the left, between other dwellings, gleamed a portion of the lake, and the tiny islet--just at this moment sparkling in the sunlight--which lies before the large island. He had seen the beautiful picture hundreds and hundreds of times just as he saw it now, when, after the morning service was over, he stood at the window of the school-house with Curt, his eyes wandering towards the region where beloved Dollan lay; and even as now it allured him from the narrow walls of the room out into the sunny fields, the shady woods, and by the blue lake. These lights, these shadow, this brilliant azure hue had kindled in the boy a pure desire to reproduce, to counterfeit what lay so clearly, though in such complicated lines before him, and so deeply stirred his heart with strange forebodings. They had been his first teachers in the wonderful language of lines and colors; and fluently as he had since learned to speak it, he was still indebted to them for all that he had attained. Had he not felt yesterday, when he drove through the familiar scenes, heavy as was his heart, that all his toil and labor in beautiful Italy had been more or less vain, and he had always painted only with his eyes and hand, never with his heart; spoken a beautiful, musical, but foreign tongue with difficulty, instead of his native language; and that here, and here only, in his native country, and beneath his native sky, could he become a true artist, who does not utter what others can say as well or better, but what he alone can express, because he is himself what he says.