1 827.] On Means and Ends. 229 



time and improves his advantages as they occur, with vigilance and alacrity. 

 Pleased with himself, he is pleased with whatever occupies his attention 

 nearly alike. He is never taken at a disadvantage. Whether he paints an 

 angel or a joint-stool, it is much the same to him : whether it is landscape 

 or history, still it is he who paints it. Nothing puts him out of his way, 

 for nothing puts him out of conceit with himself. This self-complacency 

 forms an admirable ground-work for moderation and docility in certain 

 particulars', though not in others. 



I remember an absurd instance enough of this deliberate mode of setting 

 to work in a young French artist, who was copying the Titian's Mistress 

 in the Louvre, some twenty years ago. After getting in his chalk-outline, 

 one would think he might have been attracted to the face that heaven of 

 beauty (as it appears to some), clear, transparent, open, breathing freshness, 

 that "makes a sunshine in the shady place ;" or to the lustre of the golden 

 hair; or some part of the poetry of the picture (for, with all its materiality, 

 this picture has a poetry about it) ; instead of which he began to finish a 

 square he had marked out in the right-hand corner of the picture, contain- 

 ing a piece of board and a bottle of some kind of ointment. He set to 

 work like a cabinet-maker or an engraver, and appeared to have no sym- 

 pathy with the soul of the picture. On a Frenchman (generally speaking), 

 the distinction between the great and the little, the exquisite and the indif- 

 ferent, is in a great measure lost : his self-satisfied egotism supplies what- 

 ever is wanting up to a certain point, and neutralizes whatever goes beyond 

 it. Another young man, at the time I speak of, was for eleven weeks 

 daily employed in making a black-lead pencil drawing of a small Leo- 

 nardo : he set with his legs balanced across a rail to do it, kept his hat 

 on, every now and then consulted with his friends about his progress, rose 

 up, went to the fire to warm himself, talked of the styles of the different 

 masters praising Titian pour les colon's, Raphael pour ^expression, 

 Poussin pour la composition all being alike to him, provided they had 

 each something to help him on in his harangue (for that was all he thought 

 about), and then returned to perfectionate (as he called it) his copy. 

 This would drive an Englishman out of his senses, supposing him to be 

 ever so stupid. The perseverance and the interruptions, the labour with- 

 out impulse, the attention to the parts in succession, and disregard of the 

 whole together, are to him utterly incomprehensible. He wants to do 

 something striking, and bends all his thoughts and energies to one mighty 

 effort. A Frenchman has no notion of this summary proceeding, exists 

 mostly in his present sensations, and, if he is left at liberty to enjoy or 

 trifle with these, cares about nothing farther, looking neither backwards nor 

 .forwards. They forgot the reign or terror under Robespierre in a month ; 

 they forgot that they had ever been called the great nation under Buona- 

 parte in a week. They sat in chairs on the Boulevards (just as they do at 

 other times), when the shots were firing into the next street, and were only 

 persuaded to quit them when their own soldiers were seen pouring down 

 all the avenues from the heights of Montmartre, crying " Sauve quipeut !" 

 They then went home and dressed themselves to see the Allies enter 

 Paris, as a fine sight, just as they would witness a procession at a theatre. 

 This is carrying the instinct of levity as far as it will go. With all their 

 affectation and want of sincerity, there is, on the principle here stated, a 

 kind of simplicity and nature about them after all. They lend themselves 

 -to the impression of the moment with good humour and good will, making 

 it riot much bettor nor worse than it is: the English constantly over-do or 



