Maitland manifested in a supreme degree the trait common to almost all his compatriots, even those who came in early youth to Europe, that intense desire not to lack civilization, which is explained by the fact that the American is a being entirely new, endowed with an activity incomparable, and deprived of traditional saturation.

He is not born cultivated, matured, already fashioned virtually, if one may say so, like a child of the Old World.
He can create himself at his will.

With superior gifts, but gifts entirely physical, Maitland was a self-made man of art, as his grand father had been a self-made man of money, as his father had been a self-made man of war.

He had in his eye and in his hand two marvellous implements for painting, and in his perseverence in developing a still more marvellous one.

He lacked constantly the something necessary and local which gives to certain very inferior painters the inexpressible superiority of a savor of soil.