flaring picture, all crimson and purple. These three formed Lot 70.' Turning this pair of precious faces to the wall, and placing the gaudy foreigner in front, that their native lustre might not attract notice, I marked the number in my catalogue. The sale was to take place in six days. The lot might be inspected in the interim by hundreds, but not one in a thousand among that troop of picture-buyers and teaboard critics would recognise those rude sketches as being worth five shillings. The French flare, however, had its fascinations, and it was but too probable that the lot would fetch money. Much or little, I looked upon that lot as mine; and duly attended at the appointed hour of sale, resolved to stand a contest if need be, even at the cost of being supposed guilty of coveting such an abomination as the purple and crimson thing. Alas! the door was closed, and the sale was over! It had taken place a day earlier, in consequence of Her Majesty's coronation-day being changed."

"It was changed, I remember; George the Fourth, you know, died-"

"I can't help that," said Sharpson, impatiently; "but I know the change occasioned me bitter mortification, and many weeks of anxious labour and inquiry. Those twin-beauties had been carried off at one fell swoop, by some vulgar hand that clutched only at their bright-coloured companion. The possessor never coveted those simple deities in an undress, he was in love only with Sukey Tawdry. He had paid something for what was worthless, but he had obtained what was invaluable for nothing. Yes, literally, that pair of Exquisites, whose divine beauty you conceive to be intelligible to the meanest capacity,' had been in scores of hands, taken up and set down again, held in a particular light to promote the discovery of their meaning, and turned over and over in the search for some name that might illumine their obscurity: yet they had only been knocked down at last as foils to the lustre of the foreigner.

"Had a man of taste, discovering the hidden jewels, borne them off for their own sakes, I should have felt more reconciled to my mischance; had I been defeated in a contest for them, I had been content; but they had fallen to one who gained nothing by my loss. I was a victim, not to superior sagacity, but to false principles of taste, and vulgar ignorance of the beautiful.

·

"All I could learn about the lot was, that it fetched nothing and was knocked down to nobody-to a man named ; perhaps a dealer, perhaps not; he had paid, and departed with his prize. In every direction did I go to work, to discover a man named From the Directory' to the Court-guide,' from the Court-guide' to the lists of the learned societies, of Parliament and of the Army and Navy, I searched, and found the name often, but no clue to the picturebuyer. I wrote many letters, and paid divers visits. I made the grand tour of town, dipping into the frame-makers' shops, ransacking the brokers, and routing up every neglected receptacle for odds-andends of vertu. But in the course of this adventurous and wearying search, not one word of inquiry did I hazard concerning the real objects of my desire. People, thongh profoundly ignorant of art, are learned in human whims, and, if successful in finding them for me, would have made me pay for my apparent craziness. I asked only

for the French flarer, which I did not mean to buy. Its colour, once descried, would be a torch to light me to my nameless treasures.

"At last, upon my putting the question, which I began now to do mechanically to every one I met, Do you know a man named

a sort of picture-dealer?' I one day felt myself lifted into the air with joy at hearing the unhoped-for answer,

"Yes, I think I do; if you go into Barbican-' And I was directed to the street.

"And therein, indeed, was the house I sought. There amidst a miscellaneous assemblage of valuables, comprising second-hand harness, new and old implements of trade and remnants of faded furniture, a few pictures were visible through the smoke and dust. In another minute I had paused before the door, and could scarcely suppress in the open street a cry of delight. Brightest and loveliest amongst them, like Lucifer, star of the morning, shone in the place of honour at the doorway-on the line, as they say in the Academy-the glorious French chef d'œuvre in crimson and purple. I have been in Holland, Belgium, France, and Italy, but I think I never saw a picture with half so much pleasure. I could have found it in my heart to buy it to give away to an acquaintance who had injured me. But revenge is not a Christian virtue, and I buttoned up my pocket. "After a few turns, to and fro, to allay my rapture, I again paused at the door. The man named , my long-sought, late-found, all unconscious, but most cruel enemy, at once made his appearance. He marked my glistening eye as I pretended to inspect the French phenomenon, and felt sure that he had got a customer. I looked at him for an instant with the inward reflection, 'So you are the man named- -! Merciful gods, how I have talked and dreamed about you!'

"A fine picture that, sir-chaste colouring-by an eminent French artist, and quite new. The price? It's only fifteen guineas!'

"It is certainly a brilliant work of its kind,' I remarked, walking into the shop, and glancing carelessly round; I fancied it might form a companion to a French picture of mine-if so-but I shall see-give me the dimensions of it, will you? Fifteen guineas! umph! I think it would fit a vacant frame I happen to have-ah! yes-pray let me have the exact measure.'

"And at this point of the proceeding, my eyes, which during the measurement of the four feet of purple by three of crimson, had been anxiously directed, high and low, into every corner of the shop, detected near the end, the two springs in the desert-my pair of painted poems, my Paradise Lost and Regained! My heart leaped up, as though I had beheld

A rainbow in the sky!

Nay, two rainbows! But caution was still necessary, for eagerness might defeat my purpose.

"The man named had he seen how the sketches affected me, would have been cunning enough to ask a huge price, and I was predetermined to complete my triumph by securing them for a trifle.

"Ah! so these are the exact dimensions-three-feet-four-yes, very well-it is a striking picture, certainly. Why, you have several

good paintings here, several; excellent indeed; pleasing foreground that, and sky quite airy. This! by Sir Joshua Lawrence! is it really? very clever, and a capital frame! Ah, so you paint a little yourself, I perceive these two things here."

"What things, sir? Oh, them-ah! no, sir, I didn't do 'em— little too busy to amuse myself that way.'

"Better employed, eh? But one of your little boys, perhaps, has been trying his hand-has a sort of turn for-'

"No, sir, no; I don't know what they are, not I; I met with 'em somewhere I've heard say they don't look amiss in some lights-at this distance now?'

6

"Ah! I perceive-might easily be improved though, you think. Well, now I see you didn't paint them, or you wouldn't laugh at them so. But this French picture here-I have a fit companion for it-fifteen pounds you said-guineas, was it? I always pay pounds. And this is the exact measure-umph! As for these queer beginnings, I suppose they are not for sale at all? I think I could colour them up into something rather different.'

"Why, sir, if you take the handsome French painting, I shall throw you these things in for nothing.'

66 6

No, no, not for nothing. Well then-come-suppose I agree to your price, guineas instead of pounds, allowing the odd shillings for these little extras! And, by the by, I may as well move them out of your way at once, and take them in the cab with me. Can you give me change for a sovereign?"

"The cab seemed to fly away with me-me and my two companions."

"Elysian beauty, melancholy grace!"

I exclaimed, "these are the names of the two. Lovely and spiritual children of exalted Art, partakers of the spirit's privilege-Invisibility -being before the world's eyes, yet all unnoticed and unseen! But I must be pardoned, notwithstanding this true story, for maintaining that the present remarkable and adventurous age is not so grossly ignorant "

"On all points; assuredly not," returned Sharpson. "The educated classes generally, are excellent judges of beef, respectable judges of books, tolerable judges of music, no contemptible judges of taxes, and very bad judges of each other-but the thing they know least about is Art. People who are good critics on other great subjects, are mere canters upon this-that's my creed. And now, what shall it be, once

more-coffee or claret ?"

THE HOT-WATER CURE.

ACCORDING to the traditions of the last century, a physician of 1742 was a well-powdered, elderly gentleman, whose town residence was a well-built London chariot, and whose ensign of office, a goldheaded consulting-cane. After the birthday, on the 4th of June, it was his custom to order his patients for three or four months into the country, for change of air, while he proceeded to his country-seat for the enjoyment of its domestic felicity and sour grapes; while such among them as were obstinate enough to be bedridden, were assigned for the period of his absence to the well-tied hands of some confidential apothecary.

A physician of 1842, on the contrary, is a gentleman of a certain age, who figures in a natty caoutchouc brutus, and highly-varnished boots; whose town residence stands in a fashionable square, and whose bâton of office is the whip of a well-appointed cabriolet. At the close of the season, the fashionable M.D. orders himself to some foreign watering-place - Aix-la-Chapelle, Wiesbaden, Töplitz, or Carlsbad, -the waters of which become indispensable, not only to his own health, but to that of all his patients,-beneficial at once to his own gout, the plethora of the fat marchioness,-the dyspepsia of the roué duke, and the consumption or hysteria of a whole bevy of fashionable misses! By this arrangement his professional career becomes as agreeable as profitable, and it will go hard with such a medicus if he do not pick up a black, white, or yellow eagle among the German principicules, as a pretext for being beknighted on his return to England. Once Sir Anything, he has only to get up a quarto on the virtues of Twitchingem or Switchingem, or some other equally sonorous spa of the Black Forest, affix to his name the initials of his German order, as well as of the various societies into which he has flummeried himself;-send a well-bound copy to the Emperor of Russia, to secure a diamond ring in return; another to Louis Philippe, to fish for a snuff box; and a third to Louis of Bavaria, as a hint for a gold medal; which imperial benefactions and regal compliments he duly advertises, as they successively come to hand, per paragraph in the morning papers, and lo! his fortune is made with the fools of the fashionable world!

Even such a man is the eminent Sir Jedediah Claversham, &c. &c. &c. &c. &c. &c. &c. &c. of Hanover-square; whose portrait may be admired in the various annual exhibitions,-in oils, crayons, watercolours, from miniature to full length, besides being engraved in all the printshops, and stitched in Berlin-work in all the fancy repositories! Arranged with fitting classification under glass in his gorgeous drawing-room, lie the insignia of half-a-dozen orders, a profusion of gold. and silver medals of honour, autograph letters from crowned heads, diplomas from foreign universities, announcing Sir Jedediah Claversham to be a man of European reputation." The beau monde cannot be ignorant that while his cab is waiting at the door of some dowager in Wilton Crescent, Rome, Dresden, Stockholm, are in agonies of impatience for his answer to their letters. Sir Jedediah is, in short, a Dec. -VOL. LXVI. NO. CCLXIV.

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2 I

modern Boerhaave-a Boerhaave with diamond shirt-studs and white kid-gloves!

The influence which this transformation in the form and pressure of medical capacities may have had on the bills of mortality, is a matter for the consideration of Mr. Wakley, or the discussion of the Statistical Society. Certain it is, meanwhile, that our pills have been agreeably gilded by the innovations of the new school and that a one-andtwenty day fever, prolonged in duration to forty-two, appears reduced to a ten days visitation by the agreeability of the Sir Jedediahs of the day.

By the obsolete order of three-visits-and-three-draughts-a-day-apothecaries, a malady was rendered a calamity indeed! whereas the travelled Esculapii execute for the sick and ailing world all that Howell and James perform for the fashionable, by the assiduous importation of the last new novelties and spring fashions of the continent. While the jog-trot men of routine, still extant in the quizical old College of Physicians, or their snail-shells in Baker-street or Bloomsbury, adhere to rhubarb, senna, and the Pharmacopeia Londonensis or Edinensis, the Sir Jedediahs come back from the continent at the expiration of every cholera-season, bringing with them, by the Antwerp steamer, some monstrous nostrum-some patent device, such as curing consumption by the application of bear's-grease to the soles of the feet, or removing tubercles from the lungs by baths of oxtail soup! One year, homeopathy is their stalking-horse; the next, brandy and salt; the third, the cold-water cure!

The importation of Sir Jedediah last season, however, still remains an anonymous mystery-a cure without a name! Homœopathy has long been vulgarized by the press; and Vincent Preissnitz became a byword the moment his book of revelations was seen in print; warned by which experience, Sir Jedediah chose to be as mute as a mummy concerning a new system of medical treatment, to which he is reported to have become a convert at the baths of Mehadia, in Hungary, in consultation with the body-physician of Georgewitsch Czerny, Prince of Servia, called in with him to attend the hysterical waiting-maid of an English dowager of fashion, by whom rumours of the wondrous works of her united doctors were circulated on her return, throughout half the country-houses of Great Britain. In the course of the spring, accordingly, Sir Jedediah began to foresee the necessity for doubling the returns of his profits to the income-tax commissioners. Patients sprang under his feet like mushrooms! Still he uttered not a word. When applied to by a dozen applicants for a programme of his performances when requested by letters from Ireland or the Land'send, to state whether his mode of practice were founded on electropathy, or hydropathy, or any other newly-invented pathy, he contented himself with replying that he possessed no exclusive mode of practice, and that all he demanded was "the power of communicating with his patient in person and alone."

The immediate consequence of this regulation was the establishment of two new hotels, and the letting of all the old lodging-houses in the vicinity of Hanover-square, at the various doors of which the cab of the fashionable physician is still seen in daily waiting, in doses of