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move us with their deep and spontaneous throbbings of gratitude and delight.
Such being some of the principal directions in which the student who would cultivate the fine arts successfully must be continually lifting an anxious and inquiring gaze, I would now advert to one other way in which the question of "how art should be studied," may be fittingly answered. To such a question may we not reply, Unceasingly, laboriously, unselfishly, comprehensively? The old maxim, Ars longa Vita brevis est, will at once occur to your recollection, an adage which should never be out of the true artist's memory. If you shrink from "love's labour," recoil from wooing so exclusive and jealous a mistress as, if you once don her livery, or wear her colours, you will find Art to be. If she would be won, you must bear in mind that it is only by devoted "suit and service" that her heart of hearts is to be reached. She only grants her fullest measure of favour to those whose constancy approves itself as equal to their zeal. "She must be wooed, and not unsought be won." Art must be studied unceasingly, because to stand still is infallibly to go back upon the only path which can lead to excellence. It must be worked at laboriously, or life will be spent in possibly learning to do, and never doing. The fruit may set, but will never ripen. It must be practised unselfishly, or all its purity will be tarnished, and in lieu of "thrice-refined gold," the treasury of your fancies will but hold in store base metal, "which not enricheth you," and leaves the world of art, so far as you can be regarded as its benefactor, "poor indeed." Art must be studied comprehensively on account of her own universality. Practise if you will her specialities,—devote yourself, if you will, to excel in one or more of her departments, but learn to know her as a whole. Theoretically to sever with her is to destroy. Regard her as you would any animated body to every limb and member of which a distinct function is allotted, but which exists only by virtue of the