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to follow and intercept it the next morning. At other times, I have sat and watched the decaying embers in a little _back_ painting-room (just as the wintry day declined,) and brooded over the half-finished copy of a Rembrandt, or a landscape by Vangoyen, placing it where it might catch a dim gleam of light from the fire; while the Letter-Bell was the only sound that drew my thoughts to the world without, and reminded me that I had a task to perform in it. As to that landscape, methinks I see it now-- "The slow canal, the yellow-blossom'd vale, The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail." There was a windmill, too, with a poor low clay-built cottage beside it:--how delighted I was when I had made the tremulous, undulating reflection in the water, and saw the dull canvass become a lucid mirror of the commonest features of nature! Certainly, painting gives one a strong interest in nature and humanity (it is not the _dandy-school_ of morals or sentiment)-- "While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things." Perhaps there is no part of a painter's life (if we must tell "the secrets of the prison-house") in which he has more enjoyment of himself and his art, than that in which after his work is over, and with furtive sidelong glances at what he has done, he is employed in washing his brushes and cleaning his pallet for the day. Afterwards, when he gets a servant in livery to do this for him, he may have other and more ostensible sources of satisfaction--greater splendour, wealth, or fame; but he will not be so wholly in his art, nor will his art have such a hold on him as when he was too poor to transfer its meanest drudgery to others--too humble to despise aught that had to do with the object of his glory and his pride, with that on which all his projects of ambition or pleasure were founded. "Entire affection scorneth nicer hands." When the professor is above this mechanical part of his business, it may have become a _stalking-horse_ to other worldly schemes, but is no longer his _hobby-horse_ and the delight of his inmost thoughts-- "His shame in crowds, his solitary pride!" I used sometimes to hurry through this part of my occupation, while the Letter-Bell (which was my dinner-bell) summoned me to the fraternal board, where youth and hope "Made good digestion wait on appetite And health on both"-- or oftener I put it of
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