The masterpieces of Scotch historic
fiction that have thrilled, entertained and uplifted millions of his
fellow-men are a glorious monument on the field of a seeming failure.
When Millet, the painter of the "Angelus" worked on his almost divine
canvas, in which the very air seems pulsing with the regenerating
essence of spiritual reverence, he was painting against time, he was
antidoting sorrow, he was racing against death. His brush strokes, put
on in the early morning hours before going to his menial duties as a
railway porter, in the dusk like that perpetuated on his canvas,--meant
strength, food and medicine for the dying wife he adored. The art
failure that cast him into the depths of poverty unified with
marvellous intensity all the finer elements of his nature. This rare
spiritual unity, this purging of all the dross of triviality as he
passed through the furnace of poverty, trial, and sorrow gave eloquence
to his brush and enabled him to paint as never before,--as no
prosperity would have made possible.
Failure is often the turning-point, the pivot of circumstance that
swings us to higher levels. It may not be financial success, it may not
be fame; it may be new draughts of spiritual, moral or mental
inspiration that will change us for all the later years of our life.
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