to follow and intercept it the next morning.
At other times, I have sat and watched the decaying embers in a little
_back_ painting-room (just as the wintry day declined,) and brooded
over the half-finished copy of a Rembrandt, or a landscape by Vangoyen,
placing it where it might catch a dim gleam of light from the fire;
while the Letter-Bell was the only sound that drew my thoughts to the
world without, and reminded me that I had a task to perform in it. As to
that landscape, methinks I see it now--

"The slow canal, the yellow-blossom'd vale,
The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail."

There was a windmill, too, with a poor low clay-built cottage beside
it:--how delighted I was when I had made the tremulous, undulating
reflection in the water, and saw the dull canvass become a lucid mirror
of the commonest features of nature! Certainly, painting gives one a
strong interest in nature and humanity (it is not the _dandy-school_
of morals or sentiment)--

"While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things."

Perhaps there is no part of a painter's life (if we must tell "the
secrets of the prison-house") in which he has more enjoyment of himself
and his art, than that in which after his work is over, and with furtive
sidelong glances at what he has done, he is employed in washing his
brushes and cleaning his pallet for the day. Afterwards, when he gets
a servant in livery to do this for him, he may have other and more
ostensible sources of satisfaction--greater splendour, wealth, or fame;
but he will not be so wholly in his art, nor will his art have such a
hold on him as when he was too poor to transfer its meanest drudgery to
others--too humble to despise aught that had to do with the object of
his glory and his pride, with that on which all his projects of ambition
or pleasure were founded. "Entire affection scorneth nicer hands." When
the professor is above this mechanical part of his business, it may have
become a _stalking-horse_ to other worldly schemes, but is no longer
his _hobby-horse_ and the delight of his inmost thoughts--

"His shame in crowds, his solitary pride!"

I used sometimes to hurry through this part of my occupation, while the
Letter-Bell (which was my dinner-bell) summoned me to the fraternal
board, where youth and hope

"Made good digestion wait on appetite
And health on both"--

or oftener I put it of