is to the scholar. There is no such method for mastering the meaning of a book, for getting at its heart, if I may so say, as to have read it in a language with which we are not thoroughly familiar, which obliges us to dwell more or less on every word it contains. And none but those who have patiently studied Nature under her varying moods, as the sketcher must, can know the deep signification of those many voices through which she speaks to

man.

For "the use of art," as Bacon tells us, "hath been to give some shadow of "satisfaction to the mind of man in "those points wherein the nature of "things doth deny it :—a more ample "greatness, a more exact goodness, a "more absolute variety, than can be "found in the nature of things." Hence it is that the interest of a picture depends mainly upon the human element interfused in it, upon the human sentiment which created it. When we stand before the landscape painting, of a master, we say :-That scene under a certain aspect and at a certain time looked so to this man, so and no otherwise. Being a poet, he saw in it what the peasant who accompanied him and carried his white umbrella, did not see— "A presence that disturbed him with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.'

And, seeing these things, he has noted them down for us, as a κτῆμα ἐς ἀεὶ, α joy for ever. In truth, his picture-it is himself! Whatever of nobleness, whatever of reverence for fact, whatever of originality, whatever of beauty we see there, we may look for in the man himself. In him these qualities live, and move, and have their being. And from him they have come forth to be embodied in the work of his hand.

"Where," said a tiro to one of the old painters, "where do you get the model from whom your Madonnas are painted? For I, too, would gladly look upon so much majesty, humility, and grace."

"Here!" said the master, calling his old colour-grinder to him; and, placing the man, an aged cripple, in a certain posture before him, the outlines of a face and form so postured soon grew upon his canvas; but it was the beautiful form of a woman, and the face of the virgin-mother. And I myself once received a lesson of a similar kind, which I have not forgotten. Living in a country essentially destitute of the features which artists love, being flat, treeless, and agricultural, a country once characterised by a witty, worthless king as only fit to be cut up into roads by which its inhabitants might get away from it, I had often bemoaned myself on account of the dearth of the beautiful about me, and looked in vain for subjects for my sketch-book. I naturally expected, therefore, much sympathy from an artist, an old friend of mine, who came to spend a few days with me one summer. The morning after his arrival, however, I found him under the white umbrella in a bit of waste ground at the back of my house, where a few straggling beeches and elms surround an old barn and some outhouses. In the midst of faggots, and hen-coops, and dust-heaps, and other rubbish which collects in such places, he had taken up his position, and had begun a large drawing in water-colour of two or three of these trees, which he said were most picturesquely grouped. And so indeed it seemed. At any rate, with trees and sky, and some felled timber lying amidst docks and mallow leaves, he produced a charming picture, full of light and colour and beauty. "My dear fellow," he said to me, on taking leave, "I have been through the best part of the Highlands this year; yet I rather think that I shall send this," touching the portfolio with his sketch made at my barn-door, "as my contribution to the-gallery in the spring."

Herein it is that the photograph, wonderful mirror as it is of nature, fails signally; because it is but a mirror. It has no choice. It shows no thought or feeling in its reflection of fact. The mind of the artist seizing upon a certain

aspect of nature whose beauty has stirred its depths, the feeling of the moment passes into the work of his hands, and stamps it with a sentiment which the scene itself might not have suggested to others, but which, as interpreted by him, comes home to us at once. Photography does well enough perhaps for foreground bits, the waifs and strays of landscape; a few wayside stones, a group of ferns upon a crumbling wall, the rugged bole of a tree, with its little forests of moss and patches of lichens, these things it renders to us with fidelity; and we are thankful for what it can give. But in landscape proper I think it utterly fails. Take up a photograph-the best-and see. You have mountains indeed, trees, the winding river, nay, the very play of light and shadow; but the spirit of the scene is not there. You look upon it as you would look upon a beautiful face, which lies hushed and still in death. Therefore, even as a remembrance of a place we have seen, it seems to me that a photograph is most unsuggestive; and, as a remembrance of a person we have known, most unsatisfactory. When you, sir, call up the image of the woman you love, is it the mere shape of the face you remember, the curve of the eyebrow, or the colour of the cheek? Nay, these are but the outward manifestations of an earthly beauty, which all are privileged to note, which is destined to be the prey of the worm, and to mingle with the common dust. But there has been a moment-perhaps it was but a moment-when the eye beamed with a soft and yet most brilliant light, the light of a love that was unfathomable, which absence could never dull, and which death could not destroy: there was a moment when the lip spoke with an unwonted eloquence, though no sound came forth from it; when all the fair face blazed forth into an unearthly paradise-beauty, of which you, and you alone, were the witness; and as you saw her then at that moment most truly herself-you see her now, and will see her in your dreams for ever!

At any rate, from the visit of my

"We receive but what we give, And in ourselves alone doth nature live."

If my lot was cast in an ugly and uninteresting country, why, it was true wisdom to make the best of it. If I had no forests from which to sketch, I could at all events take a single tree, and find out as much as I could about that; if I had no mountains to draw from, the elements of which mountains are made lie everywhere beneath my feet. The informing spirit of Nature works as carefully on a small scale as on a large; for she has no journeymen in her employ to "scamp" a little job merely because it is little. There is colour enough in a thatched cottageroof, with its golden stone-crop and emerald mosses, to kill the brightest tints of Tintoret or Titian; and, as the German poet said of his little gardenwalk, "it may be narrow, indeed, but it is everlastingly high, you see."

The study of Art, then, will teach the amateur to observe and to appreciate. And this, believe me, is no small gain. He may never attain much practical skill in the art which he loves; a lifetime of labour is all too little for that. But if it teaches him in some small measure to appreciate that in which he himself has failed, it will have done for him a good and kindly office. Much of the master-work of the world is only to be understood by patient study and reverent attention. But, giving these, his art will, Columbus-like, open a new world before him.

V. OF THE PROFESSIONS. HAVING lately returned home after a short absence, on going into my study I found to my dismay that the busy hand of womankind had been at work

there in a laudable endeavour to put things to rights. I need scarcely say that this had resulted in putting everything out of its place. My papers (amongst which were sundry jottings for these "Essays ") having been left on the table in apparent disorder, though in reality they were arranged after a certain scientific method of my own, by which I can at once lay my hand upon whatever I want, had borne the brunt of the attack. Some had been crumpled up and thrust into the waste-paper basket; others, more fortunate, had simply been shuffled into neatness and inextricable confusion. So that I inwardly determined that for the future I would write all memoranda upon pieces of paper cut into such patterns as dressmakers use, which are, I believe, regarded by the feminine mind as things sacred and mystical. But, if my papers were disordered, my books had equally suffered at the neat hands of Phillis.

No author was in his right place. Dr. Pusey and Dr. Close, whom I had left divided by a long array of Apostolic Fathers, were now elbowing each other for room on the shelf; and Colenso's "Pentateuch and Book of Job" occupied the place which had hitherto been filled by "Pearson on the Creed."

Whilst I looked with a smile at these incongruities, I could not help being reminded of something akin to this which I see in every-day life-I mean the incongruity between many men of my acquaintance and the profession they have adopted. In looking round about me in the world, it often seems as if some bustling hand had been at work on a large scale in putting men out of their proper places. Here are the men and the professions. But they seem in many cases to have been joined together upon the principle which somebody recommends for marriages:-" Write the names of the candidates on slips of paper, put them in a bag, shake well together, and then draw them out by two and two." To be sure this haphazard way of doing things would occasionally produce a good result; and we

sometimes see a man who has adopted a profession for which he had no particular liking, settle down to it manfully, determined to make the best of things, and succeeding admirably in his endeavours. There are, of course, also cases in which a boy discovers a strong bent for a particular pursuit, which years only strengthen, so that the man and his profession have grown up together after the manner of that boy-and-girl love which poets sing of.

But for the most part it seems to me that men choose their professions as they get their opinions-at second hand. It will be found, I think, that our main opinions, those which are matter of party debate and strife, which make us Whig or Tory, Churchman or Dissenter, are generally the result of early influence and education; matters of feeling rather than of logical deduction; whilst on the many minor opinions afloat in the world we probably seldom come to any definite conclusion at all, but are always open to conviction. And I fancy that education and family influence have very much to do with the choice of a profession. As a general rule, a man is espoused to his calling as of old a prince was espoused to his wife, before he is of an age to have much voice or choice in the matter. Brought up to look upon a certain course of events as settled, and being a man of placid and easy temper (as most men are), I daresay the prince did not struggle much against the inevitable, but yielded patiently to his fate, and settled down at last into a married life, which was neither very irksome to him nor very delightful. And I think this is often very much the case with men and the professions they have wedded. At any rate, if it be, we can scarcely wonder that a man's business is so seldom his pleasure. I am afraid that the prince often took to himself a mistress. And under such circumstances the professional man generally takes up a hobby.

J., an intimate friend of mine, is a country clergyman, a man of spotless character, and whose life I believe to

be a very happy one. He reads prayers and preaches, and talks to his old men and women, and gets through all his appointed duties in a thoroughly blameless and monotonous manner; but he is a most energetic man in the farming of his glebe. He was married in early life, you see, to a calling he had not fallen in love with. And the wife thus thrust upon him, being, fortunately for him, of an easy temper, does not punish him for any petits soins he may pay to the mistress of his choice. But it might be a very different thing if he had to depend upon his professional labours for

his bread.

In truth there are many men so constituted that all necessary work is distasteful to them. It is not that they have not the power of working in them. They will actually give the time and labour to unproductive work which, if concentrated on their profession, would insure them advancement and success in life. But this would be altogether discordant with their principles. Work, to be pleasant to them, must be wholly unproductive. The minute it becomes useful or profitable, it also becomes distasteful. I have lately been reading the life of Gray; and his was essentially a case in point. Gray, we are told, spent years of hard labour in the study of heraldry and architecture, as illustrative of the history of his country. And, at a time when archæology as a science was not, he had made many happy discoveries therein, by the comparison of the buildings he visited with the coats of arms which he found sculptured upon them; but, as soon as the time came for him to put his employment to some practical use, and give the results to the world, he straightway abandoned it. He reads through the classics with care, and annotates them skilfully; but no sooner does a friend suggest to him to edit the authors he has so anxiously studied for the benefit of scholars, than he shuts up his books, and enters upon another field of selfimposed toil. And there is something, I suppose, in human nature which No. 66.-VOL. XI.

makes whatever bears the aspect of necessary work to be distasteful and repulsive to us. I fancy that I ought to finish this Essay to-day; not a hard or unpleasant task surely, being but a commonplace chat about the choice of a profession with a kindly reader. But, simply because the thing wears the aspect of duty it has become irksome to me, and I am anxious to turn away from it, and to devote myself to-well, let us say "the history of the sect of the Essenes."

After all, the men who seem to me to be the happiest in their callings are those whose profession unites handwork with brain-work-the painter, the sculptor; shall I add the man of science, the surgeon, the author? There is, Í suppose, a certain amount of satisfaction in any work which produces a definite and tangible result after a due amount of labour, and of course this is quite apart from the money value of that labour; I am speaking only of work for the work's sake. Holbein amuses himself in the evening, after his day's toil at the easel, with a broad-nibbed pen and a sheet of paper, whereon he sketches any quaint groups which have met his view in the market-place or at the street corner-dashing in the shadows broadly and effectively with a swash of sepia. John Leech illustrates his notes to intimate friends just as he illustrated Punch. And the biography of artists has many another story to the same effect. What I will call directly productive labour has in fact more resting-places by the roadside of life than any others. When the artist has finished his picture, or the author his book, he can stop for a while, pour se délasser, and take in fresh fuel. And that path, even if it be an uphill one, by which we find a seat here and there where we can rest for a little, and look back or look forward, is not so wearisome to us as the level road which we are forced to tread without a pause to take breath in. It is in this respect that the profession of a clergyman, which common opinion declares to be of all others the pleasantest, fails. The clergyman's work is never

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done. The wheel revolves, and yet it seems to make no progress. He, of all men, works most for great results, and of all men he is least privileged to be hold them; for of him the saying is most true, that "one soweth and another reapeth." It was strong common sense which said of this profession, "I would rather have chancery suits upon my hands than the care of souls; for I do not envy a clergyman's life as an easy life, nor do I envy the clergyman who makes it an easy one."

Of course all professions and callings may be broadly placed under one of two heads those which deal with persons, and those which deal with things. But no strict line of demarcation can be. drawn between the two. They gradually pass into each other, from the profession of the clergyman, which is purely liberal, having to do with man's spiritual wants solely; through medicine, which deals with man's health; law, his property; arms, his safety; the arts and sciences, incidentally dealing with men. as men in elevating their tastes, and extending their knowledge, yet still touching a lower grade as being productive employments; down to the businesses of the world, which deal with things, and are purely selfish in their aims. But for all alike the best professional training is that which enables a man to deal successfully with men; for, whatever be his calling, it is with his fellow-man that he will have most to do throughout his life. The knowledge of chemistry, of botany, of mineralogy, this is I suppose essentially necessary to the physician; yet, after all, in the exercise of his profession it is with living men and women that he will have to do, much more than with plants, or minerals, or drugs. And so in fact of every calling, and even of every trade. And from a worldly point of view those will ultimately be most successful in their callings whose characters have been most stiffened into self-reliance. Pure gold, we know, has to be mixed with a certain

amount of alloy to enable it to be worked up and to pass current in the world. world. And professional work of any kind, while it strengthens character, undoubtedly debases it-to the standard of the world's currency.

For the tendency of active professional life, especially under an advanced civilization, is to make men one-sided, to destroy in them the "totus teres atque rotundus" of the poet. A professional man has to cultivate one faculty at the expense of others; and, like the blacksmith's right arm, that faculty necessarily dwarfs the rest. Each man must have his speciality. We do not leave the whole field of disease to the physician. If he is to get on in life, he must have selected one portion thereof for his special study. And even the artist, if he has once painted grapes to our liking, must devote himself to the delineation of grapes for the rest of his days. Of course a man of sense will strive against this tendency to cultivate one portion of his nature at the expense of another; will fight against, as well as for, his profession; remembering that there is something better even than success in life. Or, if his temptation lie in another direction, if he be the three-cornered peg thrust into the round hole, he will work on maufully till the angularities of his position are rubbed down. He may seem at first to be left behind in the race, and distanced by competitors whom he knows he could beat with a fair start. But, if so, he may console himself with the reflection that in many men the latent genius, like the spark in the flint, has needed to be struck out of them by the sharp and sudden blows of repeated failures. But, through failure or success, let the professional man at any rate take with him the advice of one of the most practical men that ever lived: "Sir," said Dr. Johnson to the patient and receptive Boswell, "get as much force of mind as you can, and keep within your income, and you won't go far wrong."