And no man, it may be added, was ever anything but a
wet blanket and a cross to his companions who boasted
not a copious spirit of enjoyment. Whether as man or
artist, let the youth make haste to Fontainebleau, and
once there let him address himself to the spirit of the
place; he will learn more from exercise than from
studies, although both are necessary; and if he can get
into his heart the gaiety and inspiration of the woods
he will have gone far to undo the evil of his sketches.
A spirit once well strung up to the concert-pitch of the
primeval out-of-doors will hardly dare to finish a study
and magniloquently ticket it a picture. The incom-
municable thrill of things, that is the tuning-fork by
which we test the flatness of our art. Here it is that
Nature teaches and condemns, and still spurs up to
further effort and new failure. Thus it is that she sets
us blushing at our ignorant and tepid works; and the
more we find of these inspiring shocks the less shall we
be apt to love the literal in our productions. In all
sciences and senses the letter kills; and to-day, when
cackling human geese express their ignorant condem-
nation of all studio pictures, it is a lesson most useful
to be learnt. Let the young painter go to Fontaine-
bleau, and while he stupefies himself with studies that
teach him the mechanical side of his trade, let him
walk in the great air, and be a servant of mirth, and
not pick and botanise, but wait upon the moods of
nature. So he will learn--or learn not to forget--the
poetry of life and earth, which, when he has acquired
his track, will save him from joyless reproduction.
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