It is good at times to do a little wholesome penance, compare our work with that of others, to try, for instance, how our picture looks in comparison with some other picture of the same or a similar subject. Modesty will perhaps point out many faults and shortcomings that we could not find out in any other way; but the most vicious habit in young painters is the perpetual running about each other's studios. To quote the words of Solomon with a slight alteration, I would say, 'Put not your feet too often into your neighbour's studio, lest individuality be left outside.' We see the effects of this practice in many of the pictures around us every day: all good work in themselves, but with so little difference of style that the only surprise is, the one name is not at the corner of the lot. It is good to exchange ideas at times, but only at times. On the whole, I am of opinion that originality and individuality are more precious than good workmanship, but both are best. It is good to be able to copy a tree, or a stone, or a wall faithfully and well, bring out all its variations and time-scars with fidelity; but it is better to paint a moral and a thought, even although it is only half expressed, for the spectators may fill out of their own mines of thought all that you have left unsaid, although it is best to be able to express it to the last letter. All have different minds, as they have different tastes and habits. Some are literal, and content with the fairness of the earth; they are poets and painters of the real. Wordsworth is a realistic poet, Millais a realistic painter; others are purely imaginative, and paint and write about visions and the unseen, steadfast and serene dreamers of the ideal. Shelley and Coleridge are imaginative poets, William Blake and David Scott imaginative painters. Fancy sways others, and flings them about, half on earth, half in air; excitement like that of the footlights or champagne others, such as Byron and Gustave Doré. All are to be admired, and are admired, and it becomes a question impossible to answer, which have the five talents and which have the three. Imagination seems to me a very sublime quality, without much joy or mirth in its composition; it does not require images to suggest creation--'out of nothing it creates'; yet I dare not say that it is a quality more to be desired than the merry fancy that builds its domes and castles out of the clouds, or from the rocks and surroundings draws images of other creations; neither would I say that there was less of power or poetry in the mind that keeps strictly to reality and renders the spirit and the being of all about them. They are all great gifts, to be honoured one as much as another, but none partaking in that fantastic unfinish and impotency called Mystery. Goethe writes:-- Pure intellect and earnest thought Express themselves with little art.