of illusion of so much of the Universe on so small a space is to taste omnipotence. While one part of the soul prostrates itself before valley and wood, rolling down-land and the miracle of the clouds, another part sings loudly and contentedly while the daubing goes on. The child that is in us all plays happily at being father. We are engaged on the sincerest form of—not flattery, but worship. A lick of Burnt Sienna and a whole autumn forest, twenty miles away, is there, under our hand. Four thousand leaves lie in a brushful of Terre Verte, the infinity of space in a thin wash of Cobalt. A pool of Yellow Ochre, a dab of Vandyke Brown, and we own a thatched cottage. With a streak of Dragon's-blood we take seisin of territories. We play at Creation, and it is the best game (in all its forms) yet invented. And the real Artist smiles on our play.
But this nonsense of painting makes me neglect the ass, and neglect he detests. Of what his opinion of us may be I have, of course, no certain idea, but I cannot think that it is high. One of us he sees fiddling with an apparatus or seated immovable with a little book in her hand or strolling the down with hair flying loose upon the breeze shouting words of no meaning; the other squats on the ground making dirty a piece of white paper. Thus—or somewhat thus—he must
