Julia was in a very high degree impregnated with the taste and
desire for art which seemed so generally the characteristic of our
people. I speak not now of the degree of skill which she possessed.
Her teacher was a foreigner, and a mere mechanic; but, while
he taught her only the ordinary laws of painting, her natural
endowment wrought more actively in favor of her performances. She
soon discovered how much she could learn from the little which her
teacher knew; and when she made this discovery, she ceased to have
any use for his assistance. Books, the study of the old masters,
and such of the new as were available to her, served her infinitely
more in the prosecution of her efforts; and these I stimulated by
all means in my power: for I esteemed her natural endowments to
be very high, and very well knew how usual it is for young ladies,
after marriage, to give up those tastes and accomplishments which
had distinguished and heightened their previous charms. It was quite
enough that I admired the art, and tasked her to its pursuit, to
make her cling to it with alacrity and love. We wandered together
early in the morning and at the coming on of evening, over all the
sweet, enticing scenes which were frequent in our suburbs. Environed
by two rivers, wide and clear, with deep forests beyond--a broad
bay opening upon the sea in front--lovely islands of gleaming sand,
strewn at pleasant intervals, seeming, beneath the transparent
moonlight, the chosen places of retreat for naiads from the deep
and fairies from the grove--there was no lack of objects to delight
the eye and woo the pencil to its performances. Besides, never was
blue sky, and gold-and-purple sunset, more frequent, more rich,
more shifting in its shapes and colors, from beauty to superior
beauty, than in our latitude. The eye naturally turned up to it
with a sense of hunger; the mind naturally felt the wish to record
such hues and aspects for the use of venerating love; and the eager
spirit, beginning to fancy the vision wrought according to its own
involuntary wish, seemed spontaneously to cry aloud, in the language
of the artist, on whom the consciousness of genius was breaking
with a sun-burst for the first time, "I, too, am a painter!"
Julia's studio was soon full of beginnings. Fragmentary landscapes
were all about her. Like most southrons, she did not like to finish.
There is an impatience of toil--of its duration at least--in the
southern mind, which leaves it too frequently unperforming. This
is a natural characteristic of an excitable people. People easily
moved are always easily diverted from their objects. People of very
vivid fancy are also very capricious. There is yet another cause
for the non-performance of the southern mind--its fastidiousness.
In a high state of social refinement, the standards of taste become
so very exacting, that the mind prefers not to attempt, rather
than to offend that critical judgment which it feels to be equally
active in its analysis and rigid in its requisitions. Genius and
ambition must be independent of such restraints. "Be bold, be bold,
be bold!" is the language of encouragement in Spenser; and when
he says, at the end, "Be not too bold," we are to consider the
qualification as simply a quiet caution not to allow proper courage
to rush into rashness and insane license. The GENIUS that suffers
itself to be fettered by the PRECISE, will perhaps learn how
to polish marble, but will never make it live, and will certainly
never live very long itself!