Sassoferrato's sweetest Madonna, and Retzsch's "Hamlet" lies open on a
side-table. The three Canovian Graces stand in a corner opposite him,
and he glances at the pedestal which stands ready to receive "Eve at the
Fountain." The pedestal has been there two weeks already, waiting for
the "Oxford" to arrive with its many precious Art-burdens. It stands
near the window; it will be a good light for it. Fred wishes, for the
hundredth time, that it would come along. There are books, surely? Oh,
yes, one side of the room is a complete bookcase,--tasteful, inside and
out.

The small room which opens into this luxurious sitting-room has a high
north window, and near it stands Fred's easel, with a half-finished head
on a canvas. Already it has changed its aspect twenty times. Sometimes
it is a Nymph, sometimes a Naiad, sometimes Undine. Once, he dashed all
the green of the wood-nymph's forest, with one stroke, into green water,
intending to put in Undine, with a boat. He has not fulfilled his
intention; but he works on, with the luxurious abandonment of genius to
its spell, be it what it may. He does not care what it ends in. One
of Fred's theories is, that the imagination, by constant and intense
exercise, may so project the image it conceives, as to make it the
subject of ocular contemplation and imitation. Why not? All objects of
sight are painted on a flat surface, and it is by experience, comparison,
nay, in some measure by the will, that we get our ideas of their shape
and distance. Poor Blake's insane painting of imaginary heads, which he
saw three or six feet from him, was the only true and rational method
of painting at all. Think of your thought,--intensify it,--create
it,--create it perfectly,--define it carefully,--group it gracefully,
--color it exquisitely,--project it, by an intense effort of the will,
into the space before you. There it stands. Now paint it.