Wilkie, a Paul preaching at Athens, or a Brutus passing sentence on his son. We should all have a purpose in life as perfectly recognised and definite as the painter's idea of his subject. "Indisputably," says your man of the world, "I have never for a moment swerved from the determination to make myself rich and respectable. I chose my wife with that object; I send my sons to the University, I give dinners, I go to balls, I go to church—all that I may be 'respectable.' Am not I a man of purpose?" Then there is the man of public spirit, who has devoted his life to some pet project, which is to be the grand catholicon for all the diseases of society. He has travelled, he has lectured, he has canvassed, he has moved heaven and earth, has become the victim of a fixed idea, and died disappointed.
Doubtless such men as these have a distinct purpose in life, but they are not the men of whom my artist reminds me—who seem to me to be painting a picture. The kind of purpose which makes life resemble a work of art in its isolated majesty or loveliness is not the attempt to satisfy that inconvenient troop of wants which metamorphose themselves like the sprites of an enchantress, so that no sooner have we provided food for the linnet's beak than a huge lion's maw gapes upon us.
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