ly,
and what was kindly wisdom sound like fatuous malignity. Was there some
such ill-omened charm working all that night on Victor Heron? Nothing
seemed to him like what he had expected. He was not impressed as he had
felt sure he would be by the poets and other sons of genius. They did
not seem to constitute an assembly of noble minds in whose midst he was
to feel such reverence as the rude Gauls of history or legend felt in
the presence of the Roman senators. The thoughts that he heard did not
strike him as celestial in their origin. There was a good deal of
disparagement and denunciation of absent authors and artists, which if
the talkers had not been men of genius, Victor would certainly have
thought ill-natured and spiteful. There seemed, at least, to his
untutored mind, to be little more than a technical relish of art in all
they said. It was not art they cared for, but only a clique and its
tricks. A group of discontented spinsters girding at their younger
sisters who were married could hardly have shown themselves more
narrow-minded and malign. The effect on Victor was profoundly
depressing. It was like that which might be wrought upon a youth, who
after gazing in rapture on the performance of some queen of classic
tragedy, is at his earnest desire taken to see her in her private life,
and finds her slatternly of dress, mean of speech, wholly uninspired by
her art, and only taking a genuine pleasure in disparagement or slander
of her rivals.

If Victor had known the world better, he would have known that much,
very much, of all this was but the mere affectation and nonsense of
youth. These young men were as yet among the "odious race of the
unappreciated." Yet a little, and some of them will make a success, and
will have the credit of the world for what they do, and they will turn
out good fellows, kindly, true, and even modest. Nothing makes some
young men so insufferably conceited and aggressive as the idea that
they are not successful, and that people know it. There are many of us
mortals with whom prosperity only agrees. On the other hand, some of
these youths will fail early, completely, and wholesomely in their
artistic attempts, and will find out the fact for good, and will retire
from the field altogether, and settle down to something else, and make
a success, or at least a decent living, in some other way of life, and
will forget all the worser teaching of their earlier days; and will
look back without