author has observed a more than marked | fourth form, who was always blubbering reticence on this head, as if the political liberties of his country were wholly out of his thoughts. He is discreet, but we cannot believe him to be indifferent or ignorant of the civil and social result if his religious hopes should be realized. To what extent he is ever to be gratified is a grave as well as a curious question, and being himself without data, he must be content to wait for the answer. That is hid, he says, and "is the secret of God," -"but this," he adds, "is no secret that the human mind will conquer, for it will not let itself be taken in the webs of theocracy; and that caste must give way which is now so powerful, and which, with a cunning long unperceived by the masses, has interwoven its personal interests with those of religion. It must perish, but this shall endure, even the truth as revealed in the gospel, which fadeth not away." London Society Magazine. THE MODEL'S STORY. I DON'T know what it was that first induced me to become a painter. Every one was against it. My father thought it was madness. My mother said she was dreadfully disappointed at my foolish choice. My sisters wondered that I did not prefer the army, the bar, a public office, anything, rather than such a profession. As for Dr. Dactyl (then headmaster of Muzzington School, where I was pursuing my curriculum), he privately informed me in his library that any young man who would wilfully abandon the study of the classic authors at my age, and thus forego the inestimable advantages of a university career, must be in a bad way. The truth is, the doctor and I had not been on the best of terms. Long before I began to draw in an orthodox way from the "antique," at Mr. Mastic's atelier in Berners-street, I had had an idle knack of scribbling; and, in my school hours, this youthful taste frequently developed itself in the form of caricature. I believe I might have filled a portfolio with sketches of my schoolfellows. Podgkins, the stout boy, in his short trousers; Dullaway, the tall dunce in the over his syntax; Mother Banbury, who came to us regularly on Wednesdays and Saturdays with a tremendous basket of pastry, and with whom we used to run up a monthly "tick;"-all these characters, I recollect, were depicted with great fidelity on the fly-leaves of my Gradus and Lexicon. Nor did the doctor himself escape. His portly form, clothed in the picturesque costume of trencher-cap and flowing robe, was too magnificent a subject to forego; and many were the sheets of theme-paper which I devoted to this purpose. unlucky cartoon which I had imprudently left about somewhere, found its way into the doctor's awful desk, where it was recognized weeks afterwards by Simkins, a third-form boy, who had been sent to fetch the birch from that awful repository; and whose information to me fully explained how it came to pass that I had lost at one and the same time my favorite sketch and the doctor's affections. One I need scarcely say that I made no endeavor to reclaim this lost property when I took my final congé. The doctor gave me a cold and flabby hand-remarked, with peculiar emphasis, that if I persisted in my wish to become an artist, he only hoped I should devote my energies in the right direction, and not degrade my pencil by. I guessed pretty well what he was going to say; but as we saw the Muzzington coach draw up at that moment outside his study window, he was obliged to stop short in his lecture. I had just time to get my traps. together, to give the doctor's niece, Mary Wyllford (a dear little soul of fourteen, who had brought me a paper of sandwiches), a parting salute behind the dining-room door, shake hands with my schoolfellows all round, jump on the "Tantivy " coach beside the driver, and roll out of the town. Of all the various fingerposts which Time sets up along the road of life, there are few, I think, which we remember better than that one we leave behind us on the last day at school. The long anticipated emancipation from a discipline which in our youthful dreams we think can never be surpassed for strictness afterwards that rose-colored delusion which leads us to look forward to the rest of life as one great holiday; are not these associated for ever with the final 'breaking up?" What student of the Latin grammar ever drew a moral from his lessons? "O fortunatos nimium sua si boni norint." There is the text staring him in the face, and yet he refuses to listen to it. The golden age, in his opinion, has begun, instead of ended. All care, he thinks, is thrown aside with that old volume of Euripides. At last he is to join a world in which the paradigms of Greek verbs are not important; where no one will question him about the nature of Agrarian laws. Ah, gaudeamus igitur! Have we not all experienced this pleasure? on account of its frequent apppearance on a small scale in the chemists' shops, bedecked with galvanic chains and elastic bandages for feeble joints and varicose veins. And there was the Venus of Milo, whose clothes seemed falling off for want of arms to hold them up; and chaste Diana, striding along by the side of her fawn; and Eve, contemplating herself in an imaginary fountain, or examining the apple in a graceful attitude. With all these ladies and gentlemen in due time I made acquaintance, learned to admire their exquisite proportions, and derive from them and the study of Mr. Mastic's diagrams that knowledge of artistic anatomy which I have since found so eminently useful to me in my professional career. Rumor asserts that Mastic had himself dissected for years at Guy's Hospital, and had thus acquired great proficiency in this branch of his art; which, indeed, he seemed to value beyond all others. He knew the names of all the muscles by heart, their attachments, origin, insertion I had purchased some cigars at Mr. Blowring's, in the High street (his best medium flavored, at fivepence apiece), with the audacious notion of lighting one up at the school door; but when the time arrived, I confess my courage failed me. I waited until we were clear of the town to produce my cigar-case, and pres--what not? Frequently I have known ently had the mortification of turning very pale before the coachman. A month or so after that eventful day, I was established as an art student in Berners-street, London. I had a hundred a year, which, my father assured me, was an ample allowance, to live upon, and the entrée to Mr. Mastic's academy, hard by. The expenses of my tuition at that establishment were defrayed out of the parental purse; and when I state that fifteen shillings a month was the sum charged for admission, it will be observed that the outset of my career was not attended by much investment of capital. Mr. Mastic had formed a fine collection of casts from the antique, which were ranged around his gallery for the benefit of his pupils. There was the Fighting Gladiator stretching his brawny limbs half across the room; and the Discobolus, with something like the end of an oyster-barrel balanced in one hand; and the Apollo, a very elegant young man in a cloak, who was supposed just to have shot at some one with an invisible bow and arrow, and seemed very much surprised at the result; and the Medici Venus, whom one of our fellows always would call the medical Venus the honest fellow remove his cravat to show us the action of the sternocleidomastoid; and he was never so happy as when he was demonstrating, as he called it, in some fashion, the wondrous beauties of the human form. Mastic never exhibited his pictures. The rejection of some of his early works by the Royal Academy had inflicted a deep wound upon the painter's sensibilities, which time could never heal. He talked with bitter scorn of the establishment in Trafalgar Square; hung the walls of his atelier with acres of canvas, and was often heard to remark that if the public wanted to see what he could do, they might come there and judge of his merits. I regret to add that few availed themselves of this golden opportunity. It might be that his art was of too lofty a character to suit the age; or, perhaps -as neglected genius is wont to dohe slightly overrated his own abilities. Certain it is, that as year after year he devoted his talents to the illustration of history, or the realization of the poet's dreams, these efforts of his brush, whether in the field of fact or fiction, remained unheeded in his studio, lost to all eyes except our own; and even we, his faithful pupils, did not perhaps appreciate them to the extent which they deserved. As we profited by his experience, we improved our judgment, and by-and-by began to find faults where we had once seen nothing but perfection. I became a student of the Royal Academy, was admitted to paint in the "Life School," and soon grew ambitious enough to treat subjects of my own. The Pre-Raphaelite school had just arisen. Men were beginning to feel that modern art had too long been looked upon as an end rather than a means, and preferred returning to an earlier and less sophisticated style of painting. They said, let us have truth first, and beauty afterwards if we can get it, but truth at any rate. And the young disciples in this new doctrine of esthetics suffered endless ignominy and bitter sneers from old professors and fellow-students; but they did not care. They went on in the road they had chosen painting life as they saw it. They represented humanity in the forms of men and women, and did not attempt to idealize it into a bad imitation of the Greek notion of gods and goddesses. When they sat down before a landscape, their first object was to copy nature honestly, without remodelling her form and color to suit a "composition." And, as time went on, they had their reward. Yes; magna est veritas et prevalebit. At last their labors were appreciated; and I am proud to think that my first efforts were stimulated by the example of such men as Millais and Holman Hunt. My father's allowance to me was, as I have said, only a hundred a year; and I soon began to feel the necessity of earning money. To a young artist without patronage that is perhaps an easier matter in these days than it was some forty or fifty years ago. Unless a man was "taken up," as the phrase went, by some wealthy patron-a Sir George Beaumont or a Duke of Devonshire-he could not then hope to make a living by his profession at its outset. But in these days of cheap illustrated literature, fair average ability may often find a field for work in drawing on the wood. I was lucky enough to become connected with a popular periodical, and managed to eke out my income by using my pencil in its service. There is something very delightful in handling the first money that one has earned. To know that you are under no obligation for it, that it is yours by the strictest law of justice, that you have actually turned your brains or fingers to some account at last; that your service in the world is acknowledged substantially in those few glittering coins or that crisp, pleasant-looking slip of paper; there is a charm, I say, about the first fee or honorarium which we never experience again. Hundreds may be paid into our bankers when we are famous. Our great-aunts may shuffle off this mortal coil, and leave us untold treasures in the Three per Cents; but we shall never look upon a guinea or a five-pound note with the same degree of interest which we felt in pocketing the price of our earliest labor. I took care not to let this employment interfere with my ordinary studies. My object was to be a painter, not a draughtsman; and it was perhaps fortunate that I did not get more magazine work than sufficed to keep me out of want, just then, or I might have neglected my palette altogether. One of the earliest commissions which I obtained was through the influence of a little lady whose name I have already mentioned Mary Wyllford. Within two years after I had left the doctor's establishment he had received a colonial appointment; and when he left his native country, deeply beloved and regretted by his old pupils (whose pious tribute to his worth finally took the form of a silver inkstand), Mary came up to town to live with her mother, a young and still handsome widow of eight-andthirty, who had just returned from the Continent. I had often felt some surprise that Mrs. Wyllford should have voluntarily separated herself for so long a time from her child; but Mary now made no secret of the fact that her mother had been in very poor circumstances, and that, as her uncle the doctor had kindly offered to take charge of her, Mrs. Wyllford, unwilling to become a further burden on her brother-in-law, had accepted the situation of companion to a lady who was travelling abroad. The unexpected death, however, of a distant relative, had not only placed them henceforth beyond the reach of want, but actually would insure for Miss 17 Mary a very pretty little fortune by the time she came of age. hope of Mary's love stimulated me to increased industry. The subject I had chosen for illustration was the statue scene in the "Winter's Tale," at the moment when Leontes stands transfixed before Hermione, hardly daring to recognize her as his living wife. I had had great difficulty in procuring a model for Leontes; but at last succeeded in engaging one through the assistance of a brother-artist, who sent him to me one morning with a letter of recommendation. He was a tall, well-made man, whose age perhaps was under forty The first thing the good little girl did after they had settled in their new house, was to persuade her mother, whom I found to be a very agreeable and accomplished woman, to let me paint her portrait. I have studied many heads since Mrs. Wyllford sat to me, but never remember one with which I was more impressed at first sight. Hers was a beauty of which it might truly be said that it improved with age. Just as the first autumnal tints only enhance the charms of what was last month's summer land-rather too young, in fact, for the charscape, so some faces, I think, become acter he was to personate, if his hair, more interesting in middle life than in which was turning permaturely gray, the fullest bloom of youth. There was had not supplied the deficiency. I gathsometimes a sweet sad smile on Mrs. ered from my friend's letter that he Wyllford's features, which told of pa- had seen better days-and, indeed, the tient suffering and unwearying love moment he entered my studio I was through many a year of trial. I did not struck by his appearance. His features know her history then, but had heard bore all the evidence of gentle birth; that she had married as a schoolgirl, and yet there were marks of want and and that the union had been an unhappy care upon them which seemed incomone. Mary never mentioned her father's patible with their refinement. His name to me, and I took care to avoid a manner was particularly quiet and subsubject which I knew would be painful dued, and, unlike most models whom I to her. She had now grown up a fine, had engaged, he seldom spoke, even fair-haired, rosy-cheeked girl of seven- during the short interval in which he teen, and, after the renewal of our ac- was allowed to rest from what is techniquaintance, I confess that the boyish cally called the "pose.' affection which I felt for her at school soon ripened into a stronger passion. In short, I fell in love with her, and, in the language of diffident suitors of the last century, had reason to hope that I was not altogether despised. But how could I, a young tyro, just entering on my profession, without prospect of an inheritance for years to come, how could I venture to make known my case without the possibility of offering her a home? As the little pinafored dependent on the doctor's bounty, she was an object of compassion; but as the heiress of five hundred pounds a year, she might marry a man in some position nay, would probably now have many such lovers at her feet. I was determined, at all events, to defer saying a word to her on the subject until there was some prospect of my professional success. I was engaged on a picture which it was my wish to send to the ensuing Royal Academy Exhibition. If it were accepted, I thought I might venture to look for further commissions; and the bright After a few sittings he seemed to gain confidence, and, finding I was interested in him, gave me, one dark November morning, while a dense black fog obscured the light and rendered painting impossible, the following account of his life. "You are right, sir," said he, "in supposing that I was born in a better station of life than this. I've been too proud— perhaps too foolishly proud-to own it to those who have employed me in this way before; but there is something about you which leads me to trust you with my secret-or, at least, that part of it which I dare to speak of." I assured him that I would not betray his confidence, and he went on, his voice trembling as he spoke : "I was the only son of an officer in the Indian army, who had married late in life, and at the time of my birth was living on half-pay in the west of England. My mother died when I was ten years old; and my father, who indulged me in every way as a child, dreading what he conceived to be the bad influence of at least for me to think that I was with a public school, determined to educate him in his last moments; that he freely me himself at home. The motives which forgave me the pain I had caused him; induced him to make this resolution and-grieved as I am to say it-that he were, no doubt, very good; but experi- did not survive to see the subsequent ence has since taught me that, in doing misery of which I still seemed doomed so, he made a grievous mistake. A pri- to be the author. vate education may, indeed, answer well in exceptional cases; but as a rule, and particularly when boys are waywardly inclined, it is the worst of all systems. When I went to college, at the age of nineteen, I had seen nothing of the world. I found myself suddenly emancipated from parental control, in the midst of dangerous pleasures which had all the charm of novelty, and associating with companions whose example no experience had taught me to avoid. Naturally impulsive in my temperament, I was soon led away, step by step, into follies and vices which I had never learnt to see in their proper light. I soon be came deeply involved in debt, and, much to my father's disappointment, left Oxford without taking a degree. "He received me with coldness, and even severity, and told me that if I ever hoped to reestablish myself in his favor, I must speedily reform my habits, and enter at once on the study of the profession which he had chosen for me. It was his wish that I should qualify myself for the bar; and with this end in view, I was placed in a solicitor's office at H "I can conscientiously say that at this period of my life my habits were steady, and that I looked forward with earnestness to taking that position in the world which my birth and education ought to have given me. I had, moreover, an additional incentive to industry. I became attached to the daughter of a gentleman who had been one of my father's oldest friends. She had been left an orphan, and in charge of the lawyer's family with whom I had become professionally connected. As we were both extremely young, her guardian, although he knew that my affections were returned, would not hear of any formal engagement until I had shown, by an altered course of life, that I deserved her. In due time I came up to London to read law; and had scarcely been called to the bar when my father died. Deeply as I then felt his loss, it is some satisfaction "Finding that I was now in the pos session of a small inheritance, I determined not to leave H until I could assure myself of the prospect of a speedy union with her for whose sake I had labored long and steadily, and without whose gentle influence I felt I might soon relapse into former habits. I had kept my promise. I had relinquished all thoughts of pleasure until I had attained a qualified position; and now I came to claim my reward. Her guardian admitted the justice of my plea; the dear girl herself blushingly avowed her affection, and within twelve months after my father's death we were married. "I found my wife everything that I had pictured her. Kind and gentle as she was lovely, she had ever a sympathizing word for me in trouble or anxiety; and though her husband was always her first consideration, she gained the admiration of all our friends by her sweet and winning manner. I look back upon the first few years of our marriage as the happiest in my life. I had already begun to practice at the bar with some prospect of success, when an unforeseen calamity occurred, which, combined with my own selfish conduct, completely turned the tide of our good fortune. "It was soon after the birth of our first-our only-child, that my poor wife was seized with a dangerous illness, on recovering from which she was ordered change of air. The waters of a celebrated German spa were mentioned as likely to suit her case; and hoping to compensate by economy for what I might lose in professional practice, I determined to accompany her on the Continent. "The little watering place to which we had been recommended was by no means expensive. We hired furnished lodgings in a good situation; my wife soon found the benefit of the air, and was on a fair road to recovery, when our baby was also taken ill. To a man who, like myself, has never been accustomed to the society of children, the |