Page:The Daughters of England.djvu/97

86 and a little more patience, with a little more humility too, for that has more to do with success in painting than the inexperienced are aware of, these difficulties may easily be overcome.

I have said that humility is necessary to our success, and it operates precisely in this manner. It always happens that the eye has been in training for observation, long before the hand begins to trace so much as a bare outline of what the eye perceives. Thus, our first attempts at imitation fall so far short, not only of the real, but also of the ideal which the mind retains, that if praise of admiration have had anything to do with inciting us to draw, the mortification which ensues will probably be more than a young artist can endure. She must, therefore, be humble enough to be willing to proceed without praise, sometimes without commendation, and occasionally with a more than comfortable share of ridicule, as the reward of her first endeavours; all which might possibly be borne with equanimity, if she did not herself perceive a fearful want of resemblance to the thing designed.

The practice of drawing the human face and figure, is a sufficient illustration of this fact. For one who succeeds in this branch of drawing, there are twenty who succeed in landscapes; because, those who fail assure you, it is so much more difficult to draw faces and figures. This statement, however, is altogether unsupported by reason, since it requires just the same use of the eye and the hand, and just the same exercise of the mind, to draw one object as another; and provided only the object drawn is stationary, it is quite as easy to trace with accuracy the outline of a head, as of a tree, or a mountain.

There is, however, a wide difference in the result. By a slight deviation from the true outline of a mountain, no great injury to the general effect of a landscape is produced;