Let your rest be perfect in its season, like the rest of waters that are still. If you will have a model or your living, take neither the stars, for they fly without ceasing, nor the ocean that ebbs and flows, nor the river that cannot stay, but rather let your life be like that of the summer air, which has times of noble energy and times of perfect peace. It fills the sails of ships upon the sea, and the miller thanks it on the breezy uplands; it works generously for the health and wealth of all men, yet it claims it hours of rest.. “I have pushed the fleet, I have turned the mill, I have refreshed the city, and now though the captain may walk impatiently on the quarter-deck, and the miller swear, and the city stink, I will stir no more until it pleases me.

He was born at Laneside a hamlet in Crompton Lancashire England. In 1884 Human Intercourse another volume of essays was publiPhilip Gilbert Hamertond and shortly afterwards Hamerton began his autobiography which he brought down to 1858. He proceeded (1870) to establish an art journal of his own The Portfolio a monthly periodical each number of which consisted of a monograph upon some artist or group of artists frequently written and always edited by him.

In 1882 he issued a finely illustrated work on the technique of the great masters of various arts under the title of The Graphic Arts and three years later another splendidly illustrated volume Landscape which traces the influence of landscape upon the mind of man. The discontinuation of his painting gave him time for writing and he successively produced The Intellectual Life (1873) perhaps the best known and most valuable of his writings; Round my House (1876) notes on French society by a resident; and Modern Frenchmen (1879) admirable short biographies.