Page:The Daughters of England.djvu/93

82 brooding upon self, and to maintain that general cheerfulness which is a part of social and domestic duty.

Drawing, unlike most other arts, may be taken up at any time of life, though certainly with less prospect of success than when it has been pursued in youth. It can also be laid down and resumed, as circumstance or inclination may direct, and that without any serious loss; for while the hand is employed in other occupations, the eye may be learning useful lessons to be worked out on some future day.

But the great, the wonder-working power of the graphic art, is that by which it enables us to behold, as by a new sense of vision, the beauty and the harmony of the creation. Many have this faculty of perception in their nature, who never have been taught, perhaps not allowed, to touch a pencil, and who remain to the end of their lives unacquainted with the rules of painting as an art. To them this faculty affords but glimpses of the ideal, in connection with the real; but to such as have begun to practise the art, by first learning to see, each succeeding day unfolds some new scene in that vast picture, which the ever-varying aspect of nature presents. As the faculty of hearing, in the savage Indian is sharpened to an almost incredible degree of acuteness, simply from the frequent need he has for the use of that particular sense; so the eye of the painter, from the habit of regarding every object with reference to its position and effect, beholds ten thousand points of interest, which the unpractised in this art never perceive. There is not a shadow on the landscape, not a gleam of sunshine in the fields, not a leaf in the forest, nor a flower on the lea, not a sail upon the ocean, nor a cloud in the sky, but they all form parts of that unfading picture, upon which his mind perpetually expatiates without satiety or weariness.