fection has been attained must take away from the pleasure of the
finest performance. This, however, is only an additional proof of the
greater pleasure derived by the artist from his profession; for these
things which are said to interfere with and destroy the common interest
in works of art do not disturb him; he never once thinks of them, he
is absorbed in the pursuit of a higher object; he is intent, not on the
means, but the end; he is taken up, not with the difficulties, but with
the triumph over them. As in the case of the anatomist, who overlooks
many things in the eagerness of his search after abstract truth; or the
alchemist who, while he is raking into his soot and furnaces, lives in
a golden dream; a lesser gives way to a greater object. But it is
pretended that the painter may be supposed to submit to the unpleasant
part of the process only for the sake of the fame or profit in view. So
far is this from being a true state of the case, that I will venture to
say, in the instance of a friend of mine who has lately succeeded in an
important undertaking in his art, that not all the fame he has acquired,
not all the money he has received from thousands of admiring spectators,
not all the newspaper puffs,--nor even the praise of the _Edinburgh
Review_,--not all these put together ever gave him at any time the same
genuine, undoubted satisfaction as any one half-hour employed in the
ardent and propitious pursuit of his art--in finishing to his heart's
content a foot, a hand, or even a piece of drapery. What is the state
of mind of an artist while he is at work? He is then in the act of
realising the highest idea he can form of beauty or grandeur: he
conceives, he embodies that which he understands and loves best: that
is, he is in full and perfect possession of that which is to him the
source of the highest happiness and intellectual excitement which he can
enjoy.

In short, as a conclusion to this argument, I will mention a
circumstance which fell under my knowledge the other day. A friend had
bought a print of Titian's Mistress, the same to which I have alluded
above. He was anxious to show it me on this account. I told him it was
a spirited engraving, but it had not the look of the original. I believe
he thought this fastidious, till I offered to show him a rough sketch
of it, which I had by me. Having seen this, he said he perceived exactly
what I meant, and could not bear to look at the print afterwards. He ha