he Royal Academy Exhibition with a pleasant conviction that there is on
all sides a more decided tendency towards a higher standard in Art, both
as regards treatment of subject and execution, than I have before
noticed; and I have no hesitation in attributing this sudden improvement
in the main to the stimulus given to us all by the election of our new
President, and to the influence of the energy, thoroughness and nobility
of aim which he displays in everything he undertakes. I was probably the
first, when we were both young and in Rome together, to whom he had the
opportunity of showing the disinterested kindness which he has
invariably extended to beginners, and to him, as the friend and master
who first directed my ambition, and whose precepts I never fail to
recall when at work (as many another will recall them), I venture to
dedicate this book with affection and respect."

"As we are, so our work is!" said Leighton in one of the most memorable
of his Discourses; "and the moral effect of what we are will control the
artist's work from the first touch of the brush or chisel to the last."
"Believe me," he concludes, in a striking passage that may very fitly
serve us, too, with a conclusion to these passages, "believe me,
whatever of dignity, whatever of strength we have within us, will
dignify and will make strong the labours of our hands; whatever
littleness degrades our spirit will lessen them and drag them down.
Whatever noble fire is in our hearts will burn also in our work,
whatever purity is ours will also chasten and exalt it; for as we are,
so our work is, and what we sow in our lives, that, beyond a doubt, we
shall reap for good or for ill in the strengthening or defacing of
whatever gifts have fallen to our lot."

It would be superfluous to quote from the elegiac tributes which
appeared in the public press after Lord Leighton's death, and invidious
to repeat certain unkind and unjust strictures which marred the
otherwise unanimous note of appreciation. It is obvious that an artist
with so strongly marked a personality must needs have been fettered by
the very limits he himself had set. At one time, when a painter of
eminence openly expressed his preference for Lord Leighton's unfinished
work, and begged him to keep a certain picture as "a beautiful sketch,"
he replied: "No, I shall finish it, and probably, as you suggest, spoil
it. To complete satisfactorily is what we painters live for. I am not a
great p