It is a glorious experience this spread-out nature college, which I recommend to everyone desirous of being regarded as original; an ever-varied series of lessons, the chief charm of which is that each student can only take away a little to call his own, leaving a full treasury for whoever cares to come after him. Copy great masters and read the best authorities; you will see what they were able to take out of this treasury without diminishing its riches; but do not borrow or try to wear their jewelry, for on you they will be second-hand adornments; besides, to do so will be as foolish an act on your part as if you were to put on a suit of clothes made for and worn by someone else, instead of taking the clothes which have been measured and made expressly for yourself. Of course you must learn to understand how to choose what is best suited for you, and for this purpose you must go into strict training, so as to learn the laws and rules which these masters all had to learn first, and improve upon as they progressed through the preliminary stages towards that wider school in which no earthly master could guide them. Like 'Johnny Ducks' in my story of 'Eight Bells,' I left home pretty early to begin my wanderings, but before I left home I had gone through a stiff training with different masters; in fact, I cannot remember the time when I began to study drawing and painting, but it must have been long before I began the alphabet, for I can recollect that event very clearly, with a few of the ordinary incidents connected with it. Both my parents were artistic and lovers of literature and art. The love for books had been in both families for generations, as well as the taste for travelling; many of my ancestors had been great travellers, while not a few of them had paid the penalty of their lives for their curiosity to see the world. My father painted mostly in oil-colours, landscape and figure, and he had gone through a very careful training under some of the best masters; my mother painted in water-colours, and her _forte_ was flowers and fruit; so that I had the benefit of watching them, and getting trained almost insensibly to myself. I painted my first landscape in oils when I was six years old, a copy of a picture lent to me by my first outside master, before he sent his own to the exhibition, and which he allowed me to sell afterwards for two guineas--to me at the time a very large sum. I can remember this picture most vividly, for the reason that I had to do it twice over before my father was satisfied. The first canvas was so badly done and enraged him so much that he broke it over my head as a warning to me to be more careful; the second attempt must have been better, for, although he did not praise it (he never praised anything I did), yet he did not condemn it, while one day, as I was sitting under the table unseen, he brought in a gentleman to look at it, who said 'it was wonderful.'