to be copied, and pricking the leading points with a
pin, after which, the copy being removed, the lines were drawn from one
point to another. The copies were of course soon perforated beyond
recognition, and, although I warmly protested against this sacrilege of
art, she explained that it was by that system that Albert Duerer had been
taught. This, of course, accounts for our having infant prodigies in
art, as well as music and the drama. The rapidity with which Master
Hoffmann was followed by infantile Lizsts and little Otto Hegner as soon
as it became apparent that there was a demand for such phenomena, seems
to indicate that in music at all events supply will follow demand as a
matter of course, and if the infant artist can only be "crammed" in
daubing on canvas as youthful musicians are in playing on the piano,
then perhaps a new sensation is in store for the artistic world, and we
shall see babies executing replicas of the old masters, and the Infant
Slapdash painter painting the portraits of Society beauties. As a
welcome relief to Chopin's Nocturne in D flat, played by Baby Hegner at
St. James's Hall, we shall step across to Bond Street and behold "Le
Petit Americain" dashing off his "Nocturne" on canvas. I sometimes
wonder if I might have been made such an infant art prodigy, but when I
was a lad public taste was not in its second childhood in matters of art
patronage, nor was the forcing of children practised in the same manner
as it is nowadays.

Naturally enough I did not altogether escape the thraldom of the
drawing-master, and as years went on I made a really serious effort to
study at an art school under the Kensington system, which I must confess
I believe to be positively prejudicial to a young artist possessing
imagination and originality. The late Lord Beaconsfield made one of his
characters in "Lothair" declare that "critics are those who have failed
in literature and art." Whether this is true as to the art critics, or
that the dramatic critic is generally a disappointed playwright, it must
in truth be said that drawing-masters are nearly always those who have
failed in art. I can remember one gentleman who was the especial terror
of my youth. I can see him now going his rounds along the chilly
corridor, where, perhaps, one had been placed to draw something "from
the flat." After years and years of practice at this rubbish, he would
halt beside you, look at your work in a perfunctory manner, and wit