ceeded to operate with a delicate instrument of
steel. In an instant, however, he fell back in his chair and clasped
his hands, with a look of horror on his face that made its small
features as impressive as those of a giant would have been.

"Heaven! What have I done?" exclaimed he. "The vapor, the influence of
that brute force,--it has bewildered me and obscured my perception. I
have made the very stroke--the fatal stroke--that I have dreaded from
the first. It is all over--the toil of months, the object of my life. I
am ruined!"

And there he sat, in strange despair, until his lamp flickered in the
socket and left the Artist of the Beautiful in darkness.

Thus it is that ideas, which grow up within the imagination and appear
so lovely to it and of a value beyond whatever men call valuable, are
exposed to be shattered and annihilated by contact with the practical.
It is requisite for the ideal artist to possess a force of character
that seems hardly compatible with its delicacy; he must keep his faith
in himself while the incredulous world assails him with its utter
disbelief; he must stand up against mankind and be his own sole
disciple, both as respects his genius and the objects to which it is
directed.

For a time Owen Warland succumbed to this severe but inevitable test.
He spent a few sluggish weeks with his head so continually resting in
his hands that the towns-people had scarcely an opportunity to see his
countenance. When at last it was again uplifted to the light of day, a
cold, dull, nameless change was perceptible upon it. In the opinion of
Peter Hovenden, however, and that order of sagacious understandings who
think that life should be regulated, like clockwork, with leaden
weights, the alteration was entirely for the better. Owen now, indeed,
applied himself to business with dogged industry. It was marvellous to
witness the obtuse gravity with which he would inspect the wheels of a
great old silver watch thereby delighting the owner, in whose fob it
had been worn till he deemed it a portion of his own life, and was
accordingly jealous of its treatment. In consequence of the good report
thus acquired, Owen Warland was invited by the proper authorities to
regulate the clock in the church steeple. He succeeded so admirably in
this matter of public interest that the merchants gruffly acknowledged
his merits on 'Change; the nurse whispered his praises as she gave the
potion in the sick-chamber; the lover