es--could do no more than
this; and you will soon be able to get some power of doing it in an
inferior way, if you once understand the exceeding simplicity of what is
to be done. Suppose you have a brown book on a white sheet of paper, on
a red tablecloth. You have nothing to do but to put on spaces of red,
white, and brown, in the same shape, and gradated from dark to light in
the same degrees, and your drawing is done. If you will not look at what
you see, if you try to put on brighter or duller colours than are there,
if you try to put them on with a dash or a blot, or to cover your paper
with "vigorous" lines, or to produce anything, in fact, but the plain,
unaffected, and finished tranquillity of the thing before you, you need
not hope to get on. Nature will show you nothing if you set yourself up
for her master. But forget yourself, and try to obey _her_, and you will
find obedience easier and happier than you think.

The real difficulties are to get the _refinement_ of the forms and the
_evenness_ of the gradations. You may depend upon it, when you are
dissatisfied with your work, it is always too coarse or too uneven. It
may not be wrong--in all probability is not wrong, in any (so-called)
_great_ point. But its edges are not true enough in outline; and its
shades are in blotches, or scratches, or full of white holes. Get it
more tender and more true, and you will find it is more powerful.

[Illustration: FIG. 5.]

Do not, therefore, think your drawing must be weak because you have a
finely pointed pen in your hand. Till you can draw with that, you can
draw with nothing; when you can draw with that, you can draw with a log
of wood charred at the end. True boldness and power are only to be
gained by care. Even in fencing and dancing, all ultimate ease depends
on early precision in the commencement; much more in singing or
drawing.

Now, I do not want you to copy Fig. 5., but to copy the stone before you
in the way that Fig. 5. is done. To which end, first measure the extreme
length of the stone with compasses, and mark that length on your paper;
then, between the points marked, leave something like the form of the
stone in light, scrawling the paper all over, round it, as at _b_, Fig.
5. You cannot rightly see what the form of the stone really is till you
begin finishing, so sketch it in quite rudely; only rather leave too
_much_ room for the high light, than too little: and then more
cautiously fill in the s