because Talbot imagined that, even should this be the case, the pain
would be more than counterbalanced by the salutary effect it might
produce. Alas! vanity calculates but poorly upon the vanity of
others! What a virtue we should distil from frailty; what a world of
pain we should save our brethren, if we would suffer our own weakness
to be the measure of theirs!

Thursday came: the painting was placed by the artist's own hand in the
most favourable light; a curtain, hung behind it, served as a screen
for Warner, who, retiring to his hiding-place, surrendered his heart
to delicious forebodings of the critic's wonder and golden
anticipations of the future destiny of his darling work. Not a fear
dashed the full and smooth cup of his self-enjoyment. He had lain
awake the whole of the night in restless and joyous impatience for the
morrow. At daybreak he had started from his bed, he had unclosed his
shutters, he had hung over his picture with a fondness greater, if
possible, than he had ever known before! like a mother, he felt as if
his own partiality was but a part of a universal tribute; and, as his
aged relative, turning her dim eyes to the painting, and, in her
innocent idolatry, rather of the artist than his work, praised and
expatiated and foretold, his heart whispered, "If it wring this
worship from ignorance, what will be the homage of science?"

He who first laid down the now hackneyed maxim that diffidence is the
companion of genius knew very little of the workings of the human
heart. True, there may have been a few such instances, and it is
probable that in this maxim, as in most, the exception made the rule.
But what could ever reconcile genius to its sufferings, its
sacrifices, its fevered inquietudes, the intense labour which can
alone produce what the shallow world deems the giant offspring of a