ture those
things that play up to it. He is a feeble artist, who copies
individually the parts of a scene with whatever effect they may have at
the moment he is doing them, and then expects the sum total to make a
picture. If circumstances permit, it is always as well to make in the
first instance a rapid sketch that shall, whatever it may lack, at least
contain the main disposition of the masses and lines of your composition
seen under the influence of the enthusiasm that has inspired the work.
This will be of great value afterwards in freshening your memory when in
the labour of the work the original impulse gets dulled. It is seldom
that the vitality of this first sketch is surpassed by the completed
work, and often, alas! it is far from equalled.

In portrait painting and drawing the memory must be used also. A sitter
varies very much in the impression he gives on different days, and the
artist must in the early sittings, when his mind is fresh, select the
aspect he means to paint and afterwards work largely to the memory of
this.

Always work to a scheme on which you have decided, and do not flounder
on in the hope of something turning up as you go along. Your faculties
are never so active and prone to see something interesting and fine as
when the subject is first presented to them. This is the time to decide
your scheme; this is the time to take your fill of the impression you
mean to convey. This is the time to learn your subject thoroughly and
decide on what you wish the picture to be. And having decided this, work
straight on, using nature to support your original impression, but don't
be led off by a fresh scheme because others strike you as you go along.
New schemes will do so, of course, and every new one has a knack of
looking better than your original one. But it is not often that this is
so; the fact that they are new makes them appear to greater advantage
than the original scheme to which you have got accustomed. So that it is
not only in working away from nature that the memory is of use, but
actually when working directly in front of nature.

To sum up, there are two aspects of a subject, the one luxuriating in
the sensuous pleasure of it, with all of spiritual significance it may
consciously or unconsciously convey, and the other concerned with the
lines, tones, shapes, &c., and their rhythmic ordering, by means of
which it is to be expressed--the matter and manner, as they may be
called. And, if