It is not all misfortune and disappointment to the man who is mentally unworthy of a great intellectual vocation, so long as he is morally worthy of it; so long as he can pursue it honestly, patiently, and affectionately, for its own dear sake.

Let him work, though ever so obscurely, in this spirit towards his labor, and he shall find the labor itself its own exceeding great reward.

In that reward lives the divine consolation, which, though Fame turn her back on him contemptuously, and Affluence pass over unpitying to the other side of the way, shall still pour oil upon all his wounds, and take him quietly and tenderly to the hard journey's end.

To this one exhaustless solace, which the work, no matter of what degree, can yield always to earnest workers, the man who has succeeded, and the man who has failed, can turn alike, as to a common mother--the one, for refuge from mean envy and slanderous hatred, from all the sorest evils which even the thriving child of Fame is heir to; the other, from neglect, from ridicule, from defeat, from all the petty tyrannies which the pining bondman of Obscurity is fated to undergo.
Thus it was with Valentine.

He had sacrificed a fortune to his Art; and his Art--in the world's eye at least--had given to him nothing in return.