Be faithful to yourselves and your intentions, and you don't need to care much whether the people about you consider you an object to be comic over or not; hold fast to your purpose, and never truckle to a whim or a caprice, and your art will be true and grand whether you are painters or plasterers. Yield to be the toy of the hour, and whether you are making for yourselves guineas or grins, you are only the shadow in a poor, low comedy; and your art is comic without a single point about it to raise it from the burlesque, which serves no higher end in creation than does the bashed hat of Ally Sloper. [Illustration: ART SUBJECTS] CHAPTER XII _ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS CONNECTED WITH ART_ EX LIBRIS [Illustration: I]T is only when a man settles down in life that he begins to gather books around him, and to think about the outside as well as the contents of his favourite volumes. First editions, and rare, early volumes, as well as _éditions deluxe_, occupy his attention during his leisure from business cares. The young man is quite content with a yellow cover and a thrilling or racy inside, while the elder man views these abominations in the shape of binding and get-up with horror. Artists as a rule are not great readers of books, and the more modern and realistic they are, the less they read; their eyes are occupied solely in watching and studying passing effects, while they can always depend upon some bookworm friend to give them the particulars if they want a subject from history. They take their characters from their models, the bookworm friend provides them with all the other information about costumes and historical details which they may require; therefore unless, like Alma Tadema, Walter Crane, or my old friend Sir J. Noel Paton, his art inclines towards antiquity, decoration, or history, the true painter is not much of a book authority. I have found also, from observation, that the man who is fond of his garden does not care much for his library; indeed, although no man can reach middle age without having some hobby, he is a very unfortunate man who has more than one. My own life has been so arranged by Providence that I have never had long enough time to get firmly rooted on any special soil, for always when I have just been settling down I have been transplanted quickly and ruthlessly, and the tender mosses about my roots have been torn ruthlessly from their premature clinging and scattered. At one period I took to collecting delf and china, one of the most seductive, extravagant, and dangerous of all passions; in this direction my artistic instinct of colour found vent.