prove to be
stunted, deformed, or weakly. It is his own--no man has begot it before
him--and he can take no interest in anything else, until it is
completed. Is this not true of the Painter, as he stands with his
charcoal in hand thinking out his picture for next year's Academy?--of
the Composer, seated before his piano and running his fingers with
apparent want of design over the keys?--of the Author, as he walks to
and fro and plans the details of his new plot?--of the Poet, as he gazes
up into the skies and hears the rhythm of his lines in the "music of the
stars?" True, that the finely-organised and sensitive temperament of the
Artist suffers keenly when jarred by the discord of the world--that it
amounts almost to a curse to be interrupted when in the throes of a new
conception (just thought of and hardly grasped) by someone who has no
more notion of what he is undergoing than a deal table would have, and
pulls him back roughly from his Paradise to the sordid details of Life,
putting all his airy fancies to flight, perhaps, by the process. But
neither this materialistic world, nor all the fools that inhabit it, can
ever really rob the Artist of the joy--in which "no stranger
intermeddleth"--of the Realm of fancy which is his own domain, inherited
by right of his genius. Though he may pass through Life unappreciated
and unsuccessful, let him still thank God for the Divine power which has
been given him--the power to create! It will tide him over the loss of
things, which other men cut their throats for--it will stand him in
stead of wife and child--in stead of friends and companionship.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: And that the true artist is never alone.]

Is the true Artist ever alone? Do not the creatures of his brain walk
beside him wherever he may go? Do they not lie down with him and rise up
with him, and even when he is old and grey, his heart still keeps fresh,
from association with the Young and Beautiful, with the blossoms of
Womanhood and of Spring, that have bloomed upon his canvas--with the
notes of the birds and the sounds of falling water that his fingers have
conjured to life upon his instrument--with the fair maidens and noble
youths that he has accompanied through so many trials and conducted to
such a blissful termination in his pages. And beyond all this--beyond
the joy of conception and the pride of fruition--there is an added
blessing on the artistic temperament. Sure