the matter short of success, which is too agreeable an idea for him to indulge in. The French artist proceeds bit by bit. He takes one part, a hand, a piece of drapery, a part of the background, and finishes it carefully; then another, and so on to the end. He does not, from a childish impatience, when he is near the conclusion, destroy the effect of the whole by leaving some one part eminently defective, nor fly from what he is about to something else that catches his eye, neglecting the one and spoiling the other. He is constrained by mastery, by the mastery of common sense and pleasurable feeling. He is in no hurry to finish, for he has a satisfaction in the work, and touches and retouches, perhaps a single head, day after day and week after week, without repining, uneasiness, or apparent progress. The very lightness and indifference of his feelings renders him patient and laborious: an Englishman, whatever he is about or undertakes is as if he was carrying a heavy load that oppresses both his body and mind, and which he is anxious to throw down. A Frenchman's hopes or fears are not excited to that pitch of intolerable agony that compels him, in mere compassion to himself to bring the question to a speedy issue, even to the loss of his object; he is calm, easy, and indifferent, and can take his time and make the most of his advantages with impunity. Pleased with himself, he is pleased with whatever occupies his attention nearly alike. It is the same to him whether he paints an angel or a joint-stool; it is the same to him whether it is landscape or history; it is he who paints it, that is sufficient. Nothing puts him out of conceit with his work, for nothing puts him out of conceit with himself. This self-complacency produces admirable patience and docility in certain particulars, besides charity and toleration towards others. I remember a ludicrous instance of this deliberate process, in a young French artist who was copying the _Titian's Mistress_, in the Louvre, some twenty years ago. After getting it in chalk-lines, one would think he would have been attracted to the face, that heaven of beauty which makes a sunshine in the shady place, or to some part of the poetry of the picture; instead of which he began to finish a square he had marked out in the right-hand corner of the picture. He set to work like a cabinetmaker or an engraver, and seemed to have no sympathy with the soul of the picture. Indeed, to a Frenchman there is no distinction between the great and little, the pleasurable and the painful; the utmost he arrives at a conception of is the indifferent and the light. Another young man, at the time I speak of, was for eleven weeks (I think it was) daily employed in making a blacklead pencil drawing of a small Leonardo; he sat cross-legged on a rail to do it, kept his hat on, rose up, went to the fire to warm himself, talked constantly of the excellence of the different masters--Titian for colour, Raphael for