ooked to a higher ideal than mine,
breathed a purer atmosphere of thought than I. And then the sweet, white
peace of antiquity! The great, calm gaze that is not sadness nor joy, but
something that we know not of, which is lost to the world for ever.

"But if you want to be a painter you must go to France--France is the only
school of Art." I must again call attention to the phenomenon of
echo-augury, that is to say, words heard in an unlooked-for quarter, that,
without an appeal to our reason, impel belief. France! The word rang in my
ears and gleamed in my eyes. France! All my senses sprang from sleep like a
crew when the man on the look-out cries, "Land ahead!" Instantly I knew I
should, that I must, go to France, that I would live there, that I would
become as a Frenchman. I knew not when nor how, but I knew I should go to
France....

Then my father died, and I suddenly found myself heir to considerable
property--some three or four thousands a year; and then I knew that I was
free to enjoy life as I pleased; no further trammels, no further need of
being a soldier, of being anything but myself; eighteen, with life and
France before me! But the spirit did not move me yet to leave home. I would
feel the pulse of life at home before I felt it abroad. I would hire a
studio. A studio--tapestries, smoke, models, conversations. But here it is
difficult not to convey a false impression. I fain would show my soul in
these pages, like a face in a pool of clear water; and although my studio
was in truth no more than an amusement, and a means of effectually throwing
over all restraint, I did not view it at all in this light. My love of Art
was very genuine and deep-rooted; the tobacconist's betting-book was now as
nothing, and a certain Botticelli in the National Gallery held me in
tether. And when I look back and consider the past, I am forced to admit
that I might have grown up in less fortunate circumstances, for even the
studio, with its dissipations--and they were many--was not unserviceable;
it developed the natural man, who educates himself, who allows his mind to
grow and ripen under the sun and wind of modern life, in contra-distinction
to the University man, who is fed upon the dust of ages, and after a
formula which has been composed to suit the requirements of the average
human being.

Nor was my reading at this time so limited as might be expected from the
foregoing. The study of Shelley's poetry had led me to read