ght
into Egypt. Copy these carefully,--never mind how little at a time, but
thoroughly; then trace the Durer, and apply it to your drawing, and do
not be content till the one fits the other, else your eye is not true
enough to carry you safely through meshes of real leaves. And in the
course of doing this, you will find that not a line nor dot of Durer's
can be displaced without harm; that all add to the effect, and either
express something, or illumine something, or relieve something. If,
afterwards, you copy any of the pieces of modern tree drawing, of which
so many rich examples are given constantly in our cheap illustrated
periodicals (any of the Christmas numbers of last year's _Illustrated
News_ or _Times_ are full of them), you will see that, though good and
forcible general effect is produced, the lines are thrown in by
thousands without special intention, and might just as well go one way
as another, so only that there be enough of them to produce all together
a well-shaped effect of intricacy: and you will find that a little
careless scratching about with your pen will bring you very near the
same result without an effort; but that no scratching of pen, nor any
fortunate chance, nor anything but downright skill and thought, will
imitate so much as one leaf of Durer's. Yet there is considerable
intricacy and glittering confusion in the interstices of those vine
leaves of his, as well as of the grass.

[Illustration: FIG. 16.]

When you have got familiarised to this firm manner, you may draw from
Nature as much as you like in the same way, and when you are tired of
the intense care required for this, you may fall into a little more easy
massing of the leaves, as in Fig. 10. p. 66. This is facsimiled from an
engraving after Titian, but an engraving not quite first-rate in manner,
the leaves being a little too formal; still, it is a good enough model
for your times of rest; and when you cannot carry the thing even so far
as this, you may sketch the forms of the masses, as in Fig. 16.,[219]
taking care always to have thorough command over your hand; that is, not
to let the mass take a free shape because your hand ran glibly over the
paper, but because in nature it has actually a free and noble shape, and
you have faithfully followed the same.

And now that we have come to questions of _noble_ shape, as well as true
shape, and that we are going to draw from nature at our pleasure, other
considerations enter into