rs as we can.]

This is not so. It is difficult to analyse the characters of mind which
cause youths to mistake their vocation, and to endeavour to become
artists, when they have no true artist's gift. But the fact is, that
multitudes of young men do this, and that by far the greater number of
living artists are men who have mistaken their vocation. The peculiar
circumstances of modern life, which exhibit art in almost every form to
the sight of the youths in our great cities, have a natural tendency to
fill their imaginations with borrowed ideas, and their minds with
imperfect science; the mere dislike of mechanical employments, either
felt to be irksome, or believed to be degrading, urges numbers of young
men to become painters, in the same temper in which they would enlist or
go to sea; others, the sons of engravers or artists, taught the business
of the art by their parents, and having no gift for it themselves,
follow it as the means of livelihood, in an ignoble patience; or, if
ambitious, seek to attract regard, or distance rivalry, by fantastic,
meretricious, or unprecedented applications of their mechanical skill;
while finally, many men, earnest in feeling, and conscientious in
principle, mistake their desire to be useful for a love of art, and
their quickness of emotion for its capacity, and pass their lives in
painting moral and instructive pictures, which might almost justify us
in thinking nobody could be a painter but a rogue. On the other hand, I
believe that much of the best artistical intellect is daily lost in
other avocations. Generally, the temper which would make an admirable
artist is humble and observant, capable of taking much interest in
little things, and of entertaining itself pleasantly in the dullest
circumstances. Suppose, added to these characters, a steady
conscientiousness which seeks to do its duty wherever it may be placed,
and the power, denied to few artistical minds, of ingenious invention in
almost any practical department of human skill, and it can hardly be
doubted that the very humility and conscientiousness which would have
perfected the painter, have in many instances prevented his becoming
one; and that in the quiet life of our steady craftsmen--sagacious
manufacturers, and uncomplaining clerks--there may frequently be
concealed more genius than ever is raised to the direction of our
public works, or to be the mark of our public praises.

133. It is indeed probable, that i