does credit both to your hand and the mind which directed it. But, Huntley, do you usually paint at the rate you have done the last two months?" "Why?" Because, if you do, you must be a very exorbitant fellow in your demands, to make your profession pay tolerably." me Huntley laughed. "I certainly have taken this picture very leisurely. But my time has not been wasted, for I have made many sketches which will be very useful to hereafter. I have painted the head of my landlady too, Mrs. Stokes, in burnt umber, by candle-light, and I have an unfinished study of Miss Rosina, which some of these days I mean shall rival Sir Joshua Reynolds." "I am rather affronted by the consideration that as you have taken the likenesses of almost every one in the neighbourhood, you have never once offered to paint me." You "I will sketch you out instanter, if you like. But I fear we shall never agree about your attitude and costume. would dislike a fancy character; now I scorn the idea of mere portrait painting, and cannot consent to paint any thing that is not either picturesque or historical." "Is there not something graceful in the folds of a surplice?" said Mrs. Wellford: "Or is a plain suit of black so very hard to paint?" suggested Hannah. "It will never do, ladies. No, no, if Mr. Russell will be a pope or a monk, or even a begging friar, we will soon strike a bargain. But if he refuses to be un-Protestanted even on canvass, I will have nothing more to say to him. A cowl, or a mitre, or he loses his head!" 66 Who is that coming in?" said Mrs. Wellford, looking up, as something very gay passed the window and momentarily darkened the room. Miss Holland, I should guess, from the impression of the foot," said Huntley, glancing out at the moist gravel; "Ex pede Herculem." Mr. Russell smiled. Greenway." 66 Hush," said Rosina, "it is Mrs. Mrs. Greenway entered. She had never possessed great beauty, but what little she had, had been very well preserved, so that no one would have guessed her to have been considerably Mrs. Wellford's senior. She had not much to say for herself, although fond of talking, but she had a very good memory for the sayings of others; so that, with her pleasant smile and quiet voice, if she happened to have been lately in the company of a clever person, she could be very agreeable. The only complaint that could be made was, that as her mind was retentive rather than discriminating, she remembered as much of Miss Holland's opinion on the comparative merits of Levantines and Gros-des-Indes, as of Mr. Good's notions of the Catholic question. One of the first inquiries made of Mrs. Greenway was a laughing question, whether she brought any news of Matthew. It was odd enough, that the first intelligence received of him after his arrival in town came through the Miss Greenways. He had taken charge of a parcel for them which he delivered in person at the house of their uncle, a physician of tolerable repute, under whose hands the youngest Miss Greenway was at present placed for the benefit of her health. Matthew slily thought an introduction to Dr. Greenway might be no bad thing for him, and conducted himself so well as to secure a dinner invitation. The Miss Greenways wrote to tell their mother that their uncle thought Mr. Wellford a promising young man, and Matthew's first letter was in praise of the hospitalities of Bloomsbury Square; that Bloomsbury, the gentility of which he had been so heretical as to call in question. 66 No, he hasn't been at my brother's lately," said Mrs. Greenway. "Oh, indeed, you have no right to complain of him if he writes to you once a week. My girls only write twice, and you know women are always better correspondents than men.' "But, Mrs. Greenway, he finds time to write to Sam Good oftener than to us. Now is that not abominable? Sam Good is always finding opportunities to walk over here, and drop hints of what Matthew tells him; just as if we were excluded from his confidence! Is not that too bad?" Ro Mrs. Greenway laughed, looked arch, and said perhaps Sam Good might have a better reason for walking over. sina's look of scorn highly amused Mr. Russell. Huntley, without paying Mrs. Greenway a higher compliment than a few minutes' cessation from his occupation, took up his brush, and after absently touching and re-touching the foreground, soon resumed his palette in earnest. This attracted the observation of Mrs. Greenway, who came behind him to wonder and admire. "That face looks so very natural," said she, looking at Hannah's portrait. "As Mr. Greenway said the other day, you've snatched a grace beyond the reach of art. I should like one of my girls to be able to paint in oils, amazingly; but unluckily, Anna has no notion of drawing, and Eliza does not dare to touch a pencil, now her uncle has sentenced her to a reclining board. Dr. Greenway is a sad enemy to study and accomplishments! Young girls,' he says, 'do too much now-a-days-they are expected to be proficients in every thing; and for all that, I don't find that they make better wives and mistresses of families than they did fifty years ago, when a woman was thought to be well brought up who could read her Bible and make a pudding." Mr. Russell and Mr. Huntley instantly stood up in defence of female cultivation. Mrs. Greenway listened to them with perfect complacence, and then replied, "Oh, I agree with you entirely. I am quite of my husband's opinion-certain things are done in the world, and certain things must be done in the world, or else people are singular. It won't do to say every boy need not learn Latin. -Every boy must, because every boy does, and it is the same with girls and their drawing and music. Nothing but poor Eliza's health should have made us give up her drawing, in spite of what Lady Worral has always said about our throwing away so much money on our girls' education. It was but the other day she attacked Mr. Greenway and me about it. 'Fiddle-sticks'-ends !' said she; 'what have schoolmasters' daughters, who have no pupils to teach,-what have schoolmasters' daughters, I say, to do with learning the harp and piano?' Ha, ha, ha! There's Mrs. Field, again, of Field House; she's one of the anti-educationists, but for a different reason. It is not waste of money she regrets, you know, but waste of time. I'd have all music-books, drawing-books, and story books burned in one great heap,' says she, and even then, girls would have temptations enough to neglect their religious and moral duties.' Dear me! people have such odd ideas and so different, havn't they? There's Phoebe Holland -she's not over saving of money or time either, and I've heard her say 'La! what do accomplishments signify? pretty women are sure to be admired." Mr. Russell and Mrs. Greenway took leave together; and as soon as they had quitted the garden, Rosina began to lament that "poor dear Mrs. Greenway should be so utterly at a loss for an original idea." "Nay, she is as original and much more honest than many," said Huntley as he drew on his gloves. If every 66 one were to own how many of their clever speeches were borrowed from others and how many they had already made use of in different companies, our estimate of their origi nality would wofully decline. There are as many that live on other people's wit as on other people's fortunes. I have even heard a bon-mot unblushingly produced by a thief in the presence of the manufacturer. This good lady gives us references and authorities—it would be well if a few authors I wot of would do the same." CHAPTER XXVI. DISSATISFACTION. "Abused mortals! did you know Where joy, heart's-ease, and comforts grow, You'd scorn proud towers, And seek them in these bowers, Where winds sometimes perhaps our woods may shake, Nor murmurs e'er come nigh us, Save of fountains that glide by us." THESE old lines of Sir Henry Wotton did Huntley repeat to himself one afternoon as he sauntered towards the seat near the church-yard, and he had soon an opportunity of quoting them to Mr. Russell, who was occupying the aforesaid bench, taking what Huntley surmised to be a siesta. On hearing footsteps, however, he opened his eyes, not at all with the bewildered, dazzled look of a man who has been caught napping, and a little book fell from his knee which he picked up and put in his pocket. You seem, like myself, to be enjoying the dolce far niente," said Huntley, sitting down beside him on the bench; and then, without more preface he began to repeat the old song of Sir Henry Wotton's, as if it had just come into his head. Mr. Russell did not know the lines, and asked whose they were, after which a little disquisition ensued on the character of the poet and the merits of his biographer. As Mr. Russell had never seen Isaac Walton's memoir, the subject soon fell to the ground; and Huntley, feeling unusually at a loss for small talk, inquired what book had engaged the vicar before he had disturbed him. "Don't let me think I interrupt you," said he "Go on reading by all means; read to me, if you will, for I am just in the humour." "To fall asleep?" 66 Why, that depends upon circumstances. If, indeed, the sermon should be uncommonly dull,-(for I take it for granted you have brought out nothing more enlivening than Sherlock or Tillotson,-") 66 "You mistake-it is Sherlock's and Tillotson's text-book." The Bible?" said Huntley, slightly curling his lip. Well,-and that is better than a sermon book, any day; full of pathos and poetry. The only pity is, that we are made to read it before our tastes are formed, which impairs our relish for it as we grow older." 66 The beauty of its imagery may, by that means, lose the force of novelty," said Mr. Russell, "but when you consider how necessary it is that our minds should be imbued, from the very first, with sacred truths which in after life we may want opportunity or inclination to acquire in an equal degree, you will agree with me that this greatly counterbalances the advantage of reading the Bible for the first time at a later period of life. Indeed, so much are we the creatures of habit, that religious tastes, if not formed in childhood, seldom attain their full growth." Perhaps that is the reason why I am not so serious as some people," observed Huntley carelessly, "for my mother, who is one of your very good people, was prevented by ill health, from educating me during my childhood, and I was brought up in a house where devotion was by no means à la mode. Yet I appreciate and cherish it in a way of my own, On a sunset evening or a starry night, in the depths of a forest or on the shores of the sea, too. 'Un non so che di flebile e soave has made me confess the nothingness of man and the grandeur of his Maker." "That may be poetical, but is it religious?" "Your interrogative is a polite way of hinting that it is not," said Huntley, laughing. "I have not forgotten that I am sitting next to an Artium Magister. Surely you are |
