only the performance of a few dexterous (not
always even that) evolutions on paper with a black-lead pencil;
profitless alike to performer and beholder, unless as a matter of
vanity, and that the smallest possible vanity. If any young person,
after being taught what is, in polite circles, called "drawing," will
try to copy the commonest piece of real _work_--suppose a lithograph on
the title-page of a new opera air, or a woodcut in the cheapest
illustrated newspaper of the day--they will find themselves entirely
beaten. And yet that common lithograph was drawn with coarse chalk, much
more difficult to manage than the pencil of which an accomplished young
lady is supposed to have command; and that woodcut was drawn in urgent
haste, and half spoiled in the cutting afterwards; and both were done by
people whom nobody thinks of as artists, or praises for their power;
both were done for daily bread, with no more artist's pride than any
simple handicraftsmen feel in the work they live by.

Do not, therefore, think that you can learn drawing, any more than a new
language, without some hard and disagreeable labour. But do not, on the
other hand, if you are ready and willing to pay this price, fear that
you may be unable to get on for want of special talent. It is indeed
true that the persons who have peculiar talent for art, draw
instinctively and get on almost without teaching; though never without
toil. It is true, also, that of inferior talent for drawing there are
many degrees; it will take one person a much longer time than another to
attain the same results, and the results thus painfully attained are
never quite so satisfactory as those got with greater ease when the
faculties are naturally adapted to the study. But I have never yet, in
the experiments I have made, met with a person who could not learn to
draw at all; and, in general, there is a satisfactory and available
power in every one to learn drawing if he wishes, just as nearly all
persons have the power of learning French, Latin, or arithmetic, in a
decent and useful degree, if their lot in life requires them to possess
such knowledge.

Supposing then that you are ready to take a certain amount of pains, and
to bear a little irksomeness and a few disappointments bravely, I can
promise you that an hour's practice a day for six months, or an hour's
practice every other day for twelve months, or, disposed in whatever way
you find convenient, some hundred and fift