ng of early help. It is possible, in some noble natures, that
the warmth and the affections of childhood may remain unchilled, though
unanswered; and that the old man's heart may still be capable of
gladness, when the long-withheld sympathy is given at last. But in these
noble natures it nearly always happens that the chief motive of earthly
ambition has not been to give delight to themselves, but to their
parents. Every noble youth looks back, as to the chiefest joy which this
world's honour ever gave him, to the moment when first he saw his
father's eyes flash with pride, and his mother turn away her head, lest
he should take her tears for tears of sorrow. Even the lover's joy, when
some worthiness of his is acknowledged before his mistress, is not so
great as that, for it is not so pure--the desire to exalt himself in her
eyes mixes with that of giving her delight; but he does not need to
exalt himself in his parents' eyes: it is with the pure hope of giving
them pleasure that he comes to tell them what he has done, or what has
been said of him; and therefore he has a purer pleasure of his own. And
this purest and best of rewards you keep from him if you can: you feed
him in his tender youth with ashes and dishonour; and then you come to
him, obsequious, but too late, with your sharp laurel crown, the dew all
dried from off its leaves; and you thrust it into his languid hand, and
he looks at you wistfully. What shall he do with it? What can he do, but
go and lay it on his mother's grave?

28. Thus, then, you see that you have to provide for your young men:
first, the searching or discovering school; then the calm employment;
then the justice of praise: one thing more you have to do for them in
preparing them for full service--namely, to make, in the noble sense of
the word, gentlemen of them; that is to say, to take care that their
minds receive such training, that in all they paint they shall see and
feel the noblest things. I am sorry to say, that of all parts of an
artist's education, this is the most neglected among us; and that even
where the natural taste and feeling of the youth have been pure and
true, where there was the right stuff in him to make a gentleman of, you
may too frequently discern some jarring rents in his mind, and elements
of degradation in his treatment of subject, owing to want of gentle
training, and of the liberal influence of literature. This is quite
visible in our greatest artists, eve