Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

girl may do all this alone. I do not want anything to be expected of the instruction I recommend beyond the smoothing of the path. It will avail nothing unless it teaches her to depend in the long run on herself, her own industry, and her own exertions. A certain amount of technical skill in the use of pencil and colours, certain rules of composition, the knowledge of how to stretch paper, prepare materials, and set about a drawing, may be imparted by a teacher. This saves all the time and vexation it would cost to learn these things alone. But though we may learn from another to some extent how to think, no one in the world can tell us what to think. The faculty and the will must be supplied by the learner. No teacher can instil them, though he may remove obstacles and help to quicken the growth of the powers within. Unless a girl have it in her to feel, in however small a degree, the beauty of the light summer cirrus which floats above her head, or to know how to look with joy into the glowing heart of a flower, no books and no teaching will ever give it to her. Without an inborn love of natural beauty, no one will ever care enough about drawing to persevere ; with it, no one can fail to make progress, however slight. Beginners should, I think, never destroy their drawings ; they should be kept, not in conceit, but as a proof of progress. Every drawing, however, should be made with a definite purpose, and it is best — as a rule — for each one to draw what she most fancies ; the result will then probably not only be more satisfactory, but more original. But to begin sketch after sketch and study after study, and then give them up or throw them away half finished, is a form of self- indulgence most fatal to progress. It debilitates the intelligence and weakens the moral fibre, which alone conquers difficulties. On the other hand, it is not uncommon for un- 314 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN fortunately conscientious persons to fall into the contrary error. They may perseveringly linger over unattractive studies, merely because they offer certain difficulties, on the ascetic principle of hair shirts and peas in our shoes. To these I would say : ' If you were pursuing a country path and turned back at the first stile, instead of climbing over it, you would never reach your destination. If, on the other hand, you decided that because climbing a stile is a disagreeable and tedious process, therefore it must be good for us, and you promptly climbed back again, you would delay your progress to no purpose. There is a distinction between overcoming obstacles which obstruct our onward and upward path, and idly creating difficulties for the fancied glory of conquering them.'