LEIGHTON HOUSE 
now in a very different connection may be pardoned—every unit 
in both designs is ‘“‘ doing its bit ’’—is connected in some way 
with the whole. Everything helps to tell the story—a point 
Leighton greatly insisted on. 
I well remember how, in a carefully worked-out design of mine 
—the subject of which was chosen by himself from “* Plutarch’s 
Lives”? and the history of Coriolanus—my illustration of the 
tragic moment when, exclaiming ‘‘ Mother, you have saved 
Rome, but lost your son!” the hero yields to the prayer of his 
mother, what he had refused to concede to his wife and others— 
pleased him extremely, except in one respect. In order to fill up 
a corner otherwise empty, I had introduced a boy stretched on the 
ground merely as an onlooker. The introduction was immediately 
condemned ; the boy had no right to be there—as he in no way 
helped the elucidation of the story—rather, he diverted attention 
from the central group and the moving moment. And yet the 
critic abhorred small empty spaces. ‘‘ Your little mean spaces,” 
he used to call them. 
It was very characteristic of him that he could discern and 
praise in others, qualities that we do not find in his own pictures. 
For instance, he looked for feeling—i.e., emotion—in a student’s 
work, because he had remarked its presence there before—and 
finding it, he praised it. ‘‘ I have seen that in your work already.”’ 
And so I repeat what I said earlier, that because he divined un- 
erringly in what direction a student’s natural bent lay—he was a 
sympathizing and successful teacher; and it was the same rare 
gift of understanding and of insight—the ability to take the point 
of view of another, to appreciate and encourage the development 
in others of qualities that some may miss in his own work—that 
helped to make his success as President. 
Feeling, in the sense of human emotion, does not exist in 
Leighton’s own pictures—and it is a cause of wonderment to me 
now—as it was in the days when I was privileged to learn so much 
from him—that he seemed to value much in others qualities, that 
he certainly did not strive after himself; but I think now, that 
herein he showed his greatness, and his peculiar fitness for his 
position. In this respect he was a great critic. 
Feeling, of course, using the word in its more limited esthetic 
sense—that intangible something that may exist in one portion 
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