of his presence. It had been granted with difficulty,
because Talbot wished to spare Warner the pain of hearing remarks which
he felt would be likely to fall far short of the sanguine self-elation
of the young artist; and it had been granted because Talbot imagined
that, even should this be the case, the pain would be more than
counterbalanced by the salutary effect it might produce. Alas! vanity
calculates but poorly upon the vanity of others! What a virtue we should
distil from frailty; what a world of pain we should save our brethren,
if we would suffer our own weakness to be the measure of theirs!

Thursday came: the painting was placed by the artist's own hand in the
most favourable light; a curtain, hung behind it, served as a screen
for Warner, who, retiring to his hiding-place, surrendered his heart to
delicious forebodings of the critic's wonder and golden anticipations of
the future destiny of his darling work. Not a fear dashed the full and
smooth cup of his self-enjoyment. He had lain awake the whole of the
night in restless and joyous impatience for the morrow. At daybreak he
had started from his bed, he had unclosed his shutters, he had hung over
his picture with a fondness greater, if possible, than he had ever known
before! like a mother, he felt as if his own partiality was but a part
of a universal tribute; and, as his aged relative, turning her dim eyes
to the painting, and, in her innocent idolatry, rather of the artist
than his work, praised and expatiated and foretold, his heart whispered,
"If it wring this worship from ignorance, what will be the homage of
science?"

He who first laid down the now hackneyed maxim that diffidence is the
companion of genius knew very little of the workings of the human heart.
True, there may have been a few such instances, and it is probable that
in this maxim, as in most, the exception made the rule. But what could
ever reconcile genius to its sufferings, its sacrifices, its fevered
inquietudes, the intense labour which can alone produce what the shallow
world deems the giant offspring of a momentary inspiration: what
could ever reconcile it to these but the haughty and unquenchable
consciousness of internal power; the hope which has the fulness of
certainty that in proportion to the toil is the reward; the sanguine and
impetuous anticipation of glory, which bursts the boundaries of time and
space, and ranges immortality with a prophet's rapture? Rob Genius of
its