too:
he may have a taste for all the arts, and I think he often has; but the
mark of his calling is this laborious partiality for one, this
inextinguishable zest in its technical successes, and (perhaps above
all) a certain candour of mind, to take his very trifling enterprise
with a gravity that would befit the cares of empire, and to think the
smallest improvement worth accomplishing at any expense of time and
industry. The book, the statue, the sonata, must be gone upon with the
unreasoning good faith and the unflagging spirit of children at their
play. _Is it worth doing?_--when it shall have occurred to any artist to
ask himself that question, it is implicitly answered in the negative. It
does not occur to the child as he plays at being a pirate on the
dining-room sofa, nor to the hunter as he pursues his quarry; and the
candour of the one and the ardour of the other should be united in the
bosom of the artist.

If you recognise in yourself some such decisive taste, there is no room
for hesitation: follow your bent. And observe (lest I should too much
discourage you) that the disposition does not usually burn so brightly
at the first, or rather not so constantly. Habit and practice sharpen
gifts; the necessity of toil grows less disgusting, grows even welcome,
in the course of years; a small taste (if it be only genuine) waxes with
indulgence into an exclusive passion. Enough, just now, if you can look
back over a fair interval, and see that your chosen art has a little
more than held its own among the thronging interests of youth. Time will
do the rest, if devotion help it; and soon your every thought will be
engrossed in that beloved occupation.

But even with devotion, you may remind me, even with unfaltering and
delighted industry, many thousand artists spend their lives, if the
result be regarded, utterly in vain: a thousand artists, and never one
work of art. But the vast mass of mankind are incapable of doing
anything reasonably well, art among the rest. The worthless artist
would not improbably have been a quite incompetent baker. And the
artist, even if he does not amuse the public, amuses himself; so that
there will always be one man the happier for his vigils. This is the
practical side of art: its inexpugnable fortress for the true
practitioner. The direct returns--the wages of the trade--are small, but
the indirect--the wages of the life--are incalculably great. No other
business offers a man his dai