ppointment always, or at best, of pleasure that can be grasped by
imagination only; that the cloud of it has no strength nor fire within;
but is a painted cloud only, to be delighted in, yet despised. You know
how beautifully Pope has expressed this particular phase of thought:--

Meanwhile opinion gilds, with varying rays,
These painted clouds that beautify our days;
Each want of happiness by hope supplied,
And each vacuity of sense, by pride.
Hope builds as fast as Knowledge can destroy;
In Folly's cup, still laughs the bubble joy.
One pleasure past, another still we gain,
And not a vanity is given in vain.

But the effect of failure upon my own mind has been just the reverse of
this. The more that my life disappointed me, the more solemn and wonderful
it became to me. It seemed, contrarily to Pope's saying, that the vanity
of it _was_ indeed given in vain; but that there was something behind the
veil of it, which was not vanity. It became to me, not a painted cloud,
but a terrible and impenetrable one: not a mirage, which vanished as I
drew near, but a pillar of darkness, to which I was forbidden to draw
near. For I saw that both my own failure, and such success in petty things
as in its poor triumph seemed to me worse than failure, came from the want
of sufficiently earnest effort to understand the whole law and meaning of
existence, and to bring it to noble and due end; as, on the other hand, I
saw more and more clearly that all enduring success in the arts, or in any
other occupation, had come from the ruling of the lower purposes, not by a
conviction of their nothingness, but by a solemn faith in the advancing
power of human nature, or in the promise, however dimly apprehended, that
the mortal part of it would one day be swallowed up in immortality; and
that, indeed, the arts themselves never had reached any vital strength of
honor, but in the effort to proclaim this immortality, and in the service
either of great and just religion, or of some unselfish patriotism, and
law of such national life as must be the foundation of religion.

Nothing that I have ever said is more true or necessary--nothing has been
more misunderstood or misapplied--than my strong assertion that the arts
can never be right themselves unless their motive is right. It is
misunderstood this way: weak painters, who have never learned their
business, and cannot lay a true line, continually come to me, crying out,
"Look at thi