's pleasure. No one but himself ever knew what he had sacrificed in
laboring to gain these things. The heartless people whose portraits he
had painted, and whose impertinences he had patiently submitted to; the
mean bargainers who had treated him like a tradesman; the dastardly men
of business who had disgraced their order by taking advantage of his
simplicity--how hardly and cruelly such insect natures of this world had
often dealt with that noble heart! how despicably they had planted their
small gad-fly stings in the high soul which it was never permitted to
them to subdue!

No! not once to subdue, not once to tarnish! All petty humiliations were
forgotten in one look at "Lavvie's Drawing-Room;" all stain of insolent
words vanished from Valentine's memory in the atmosphere of the Studio.
Never was a more superficial judgment pronounced than when his friends
said that he had thrown away his whole life, because he had chosen a
vocation in which he could win no public success. The lad's earliest
instincts had indeed led him truly, after all. The art to which he had
devoted himself was the only earthly pursuit that could harmonize as
perfectly with all the eccentricities as with all the graces of his
character, that could mingle happily with every joy, tenderly with every
grief; belonging to the quiet, simple, and innocent life, which,
employ him anyhow, it was in his original nature to lead. But for
this protecting art, under what prim disguises, amid what foggy social
climates of class conventionality, would the worlds clerical, legal,
mercantile, military, naval, or dandy, have extinguished this man, if
any one of them had caught him in its snares! Where would then have been
his frolicsome enthusiasm that nothing could dispirit; his inveterate
oddities of thought, speech, and action, which made all his friends
laugh at him and bless him in the same breath; his affections, so manly
in their firmness, so womanly in their tenderness, so childlike in their
frank, fearless confidence that dreaded neither ridicule on the one
side, nor deception on the other? Where, and how, would all these
characteristics have vanished, but for his art--but for the abiding
spirit, ever present to preserve their vital warmth against the outer
and earthly cold? The wisest of Valentine's friends, who shook their
heads disparagingly whenever his name was mentioned, were at least wise
enough in _their_ generation never to ask themselves such emba