the loss of valuable time in youth from incompetent instruction.

Encouraged by the success of his first essay, Scheffer continued to
paint a series of small pictures, representing simple and affecting
scenes from common life, some of which are familiar to all. "The
Soldier's Widow," "The Conscript's Return," "The Orphans at their
Mother's Tomb," "The Sister of Charity," "The Fishermen before a Storm,"
"The Burning of the Farm," and "The Scene of the Invasion in 1814," are
titles which give an idea of the range of his subjects and the tenor of
his thoughts at this time. The French have long excelled in the art of
composition. It is this quality which gives the greatest value to the
works of Le Sueur and Poussin. Scheffer possessed this power in a
remarkable degree, but it was united to a directness and truth of
feeling which made his art the perfection of natural expression. A very
charming little engraving, entitled "The Lost Children," which appeared
in "The Token" for 1830, is probably from a picture of this period. A
little boy and girl are lost in a wood. Wearied with their fruitless
attempts to find a path, the boy has at length sunk down upon a log and
buried his face in his hands; while the little girl, still patient,
still hopeful, stands, with folded hands, looking earnestly into the
wood, with a sweet, sad look of anxiety, but not of despair. The
contrast in the expression of the two figures is very touching and very
true to Nature;--the boy was hopeful so long as his own exertions
offered a chance of escape, but the courage of the girl appears when
earthly hope is most dim and faint. The sweet unconsciousness of this
early picture has hardly been surpassed by any subsequent work.
"Naturalness and the charm of composition," says a French critic, "are
the secrets of Scheffer's success in these early pictures, to which may
be added a third,--the distinction of the type of his faces, and
especially of his female heads,--a kind of suave and melancholy ideal,
which gave so new a stamp to his works."

These small pictures were very successful in winning popular favor; but
this success, far from intoxicating the young artist, only opened his
eyes to his own faults. He applied himself diligently to repairing the
deficiencies which he recognized in his work, by severe studies and
labors. He knew the danger of working too long on small-sized pictures,
in which faults may be so easily hidden. About the year 1826 he tur