When an artist looks at his work he sees himself; he has performed the highest task of which he is capable, and fulfilled the highest purpose for which he was planned by an artist greater than himself.
The rapture of the creative mood and moment is the reward of the little group whose touch on any kind of material is imperishable.

It comes when the spell of inspired work is on them, or in the moment which follows immediately on completion and before the reaction of depression--which is the heavy penalty of the artistic temperament--has set in.

Balzac knew it in that frenzy of work which seized him for days together; and Thackeray knew it, as he confesses, when he had put the finishing touches on that striking scene in which Rawdon Crawley thrashes Lord Steyne within an inch of his wicked life.

The great novelist, who happened also to be a great writer, knew that the whole scene, in conception and execution, was a stroke of genius.

But while this supreme rapture belongs to a chosen few, it may be shared by all those who are ready to open the imagination to its approach.