architecture and anatomy, and a limited stock of information, he would
paint history--mythology. He sought to illustrate poetry, and dared
attempt scenes from the Bible, Shakspeare, and Milton. He failed,
though there were glimpses of grandeur and glory in his faulty
attempts.

Then he turned back, with a sickening feeling, to the elements of art,
distasteful as he found them. It was hard to pore over rectangles and
curves, bones and muscles, angles and measurements, after sporting
with irregular forms and fascinating colors. He tried portraiture, but
he had no feeling for the business. He could not transfigure the dull
and commonplace heads he was to copy. He had not the nice tact that
makes beauty of ugliness without the loss of identity. He could not
ennoble vulgarians. The sordid man bore the stamp of baseness on his
canvas. His pictures were too true; and truth is death to the portrait
painter.

He began to grow morbid in his feelings, and was fast verging to a
misanthrope. His clothes grew shabby, and looked shabbier for his
careless way of wearing them. He was often cold and hungry. There were
times when he viewed with envy and hate the evidences of prosperity he
saw about him. He railed against those pursuits of life which made men
rich and prosperous. He began to think with the French demagogue, that
"property was a theft," and to regard with great favor the socialistic
doctrines then coming into vogue. The American social system he
pronounced corrupt and rotten, and deserving to be uprooted and
subverted. And this was the rustic boy, who, a few months before, had
left his home so full of hope, and generous feeling, and high
aspiration.