t gloom golden palaces
rose before him, silver pavements shone beneath his feet, jewelled gates
unfolded on golden hinges turning, and he wandered forth into a fair
country. What need of sunshine and bloom for one who saw in the deepest
darkness a "light that never was on sea or land"? Rambling out into the
pleasant woods of Dulwich, through the green meadows of Walton, by the
breezy heights of Sydenham, bands of angels attended him. They walked
between the toiling haymakers, they hovered above him in the
apple-boughs, and their bright wings shone like stars. For him there was
neither awe nor mystery, only delight. Angels were no more unnatural
than apples. But the honest hosier, his father, took different views.
Never in all his life had that worthy citizen beheld angels perched on
tree-tops, and he was only prevented from administering to his son a
sound thrashing for the absurd falsehood by the intercession of his
mother. Ah, these mothers! By what fine sense is it that they detect the
nascent genius for which man's coarse perception can find no better name
than perverseness, and no wiser treatment than brute force?

The boy had much reason to thank his mother, for to her intervention it
was doubtless largely due that he was left to follow his bent, and haunt
such picture-galleries as might be found in noblemen's houses and public
sale-rooms. There he feasted his bodily eyes on earthly beauty, as his
mental gaze had been charmed with heavenly visions. From admiration to
imitation was but a step, and the little hands soon began to shape such
rude, but loving copies as Raffaelle, with tears in his eyes, must have
smiled to see. His father, moved by motherly persuasions, as we can
easily infer, bought him casts for models, that he might continue his
drawing-lessons at home; his own small allowance of pocket-money went
for prints; his wistful child-face presently became known to dealers,
and many a cheap lot was knocked down to him with amiable haste by
friendly auctioneers. Then and there began that life-long love and
loyalty to the grand old masters of Germany and Italy, to Albrecht
Duerer, to Michel Angelo, to Raffaelle, which knew no diminution, and
which, in its very commencement, revealed the eclecticism of true
genius, because the giants were not the gods in those days.

But there came a time when Pegasus must be broken in to drudgery, and
travel along trodden ways. By slow, it cannot be said by toilsome
ascent,