(The 16th.] THE VARIOUS EXPLANATIONS. 451 
Would the drawing so produced be of any value? Surely yes; of 
great value. It would doubtless be a tolerably faithful representation 
of the general appearance of the object seen, but nothing more; 
its form, and position, and colour, and such of the details as the 
observer had distinctly noticed, and marked down, so to speak, 1m 
his mind, would be given; but a great deal of the details would 
be put in by mere guess. When a person draws from an object 
before him, he measures the various lines, curves, angles, relative 
distances, and so on, with his eye, one by one, and puts them 
down seriatim; ever looking at the part of the original on which 
he is working, for correction. But no possibility of domg this was 
open to the artistic midshipman; he had merely his vivid, but 
necessarily vague, idea of the whole before him as the original 
from which he drew. Who is there that could cary all the details 
of an object in the memory, after a few minutes’ gaze, and that, 
too, under strong excitement? This was not the case even of a 
cool professional artist, called in to view an object for the pur- 
pose of depicting it; in all probability the officer had not thought 
of sketching it tili all was over, and had made no precise obser- 
vations, his mind being mainly occupied by wonder. He sits down, 
pencil in hand; he dashes in the general outline at once; now he 
comes to details, — say the muzzle, the facial angle; — of course, 
his figure must have some facial angle, some outline of muzzle; 
but probably he had particularly noticed that point. What shall 
he do? there is no original before him, a glance at which would 
decide; he sketches on a scrap of paper by his side two or three 
forms of head; perhaps he shows the paper to a brother officer, 
with a question, “Which of these do you think most like the 
head?” and then he puts the one selected in his sketch, and so 
of other details.” 
“Those who are not used to drawing will think I am making 
a caricature. [ am doing no such thing. I have been accustomed 
for nearly forty years to draw animals from the life; and the pub- 
lic are able to judge of my power of representing what I see; 
but I am quite sure that if I were asked to depict an object un- 
familiar to me, which I had been looking at for a quarter of an 
hour, without thinking that I should have to draw it, I should 
do, in fifty points of detail, just what I have supposed the officer 
to have done. Let my reader try it. Get hold of one of your 
acquaintances, whom you know to be a skilful, but non-profession- 
al artist, whose attention has never been given to flowers; take 
