4 



In every art, that branch of it which is most 

 difficult, and which requires the greatest ex- 

 ercise of our ingenuity and of mental and 

 manual ability, must be the most highly pri- 

 zed, the most interesting, the most exciting, 

 and must be, when completely mastered, were 

 it only for the consciousness of superiority 

 that it inspires, and the laudable complacency 

 that always accompanies the overcoming of 

 difficulties, the most amusing. Let us take, 

 for the sake of familiar illustration, the art of 

 painting. The mere house-painter, in the 

 practice of his art, must feel less pleasure than 

 the sign-painter, the sign-painter less than the 

 portrait-painter, the portrait-painter less than 

 the landscape-painter, and the latter, though 

 the assertion, we are aware, will be contested, 

 less than the historical-painter, who exercises 

 his art in its highest and most refined state. 



harmless of the charge brought against him by Byron, since 

 the patriarch of the rod thus tells you to use your frog, that 

 he may continue alive : " Put your hook into his mouth, 

 which you may easily do from the middle of April till 

 August; and then the frog's mouth grows up, and he con- 

 tinues so for at least six months without eating, but is 

 sustained, none but He whose Name is Wonderful knows 

 how: I say, put your hook, I mean the arming-wire, 

 through his mouth, and out at his gills ; and then with a 

 fine needle and silk sew the upper part of his leg with only 

 one stitch to the arming-wire of your hook ; or tie the frog's 

 leg above the upper joint to the armed wire ; and in so 

 doing, use him as though you loved him, that is, harm him 

 as little as you may possibly, that he may live the longer." 



