be quiet and firm--quiet, above
everything; and modest, with this most essential modesty, that you
must like the landscape you are going to draw better than you expect
to like your drawing of it, however well it may succeed. If you would
not rather have the real thing than your sketch of it, you are not in
a right state of mind for sketching at all. If you only think of the
scene, "what a nice sketch this will make!" be assured you will never
make a nice sketch of it. You may think you have produced a beautiful
work; nay, perhaps the public and many fair judges will agree with
you; but I tell you positively, there will be no enduring value in
what you have thus done. Whereas if you think of the scene, "Ah, if I
could only get some shadow or scrawl of this to carry away with me,
how glad I should be!"--then whatever you do will be, according to
your strength, good and progressive: it may be feeble, or much
faultful, but it will be vital and essentially precious.

14. Now, it is not possible for you to command this state of mind, or
anything like it, in yourselves at once. Nay, in all probability your
eyes are so satiated by the false popular art surrounding us now on
all sides, that you cannot see the delicate reality though you try;
but even though you may not care for the truth, you can act as if you
did, and tell it.

Now, therefore, observe this following quite plain direction. Whenever
you set yourself to draw anything, consider only how best you may give
a person who has not seen the place, a true idea of it. Use any means
in your power to do that, and don't think of the person for whom you
are drawing as a connoisseur, but as a person of ordinary sense and
feeling. Don't get artist-like qualities for him: but first give him
the pleasant sensation of being at the place, then show him how the
land lies, how the water runs, how the wind blows, and so on. Always
think of the public as Moliere of his old woman; you have done nothing
really great or good if you can't please her.

15. Now beginning wisely, so as to lose no time or labor, you will
learn to paint all the conditions of quiet light and sky, before you
attempt those of variable light and cloud. Do not trouble yourselves
with or allow yourselves to be tempted by any effects that are
brilliant or tremendous; except only that from the beginning I
recommend you to watch always for sunrise; to keep a little diary of
the manner of it, and to have beside your wi