“I gave him my palette, and he worked the greater part of that day. In the afternoon I went into his room, and he was hard at it. I saw that he had got up to the knees in mud. ‘Stuart,’ says he, ‘I don’t know how it is, but you have a way of managing your tints unlike everybody else. Here, take the palette, and finish the head.’ ‘I can’t, sir,’ ‘You can’t?’ ‘I can’t indeed, sir, as it is; but let it stand till to-morrow morning and get dry, and I will go over it with all my heart.’ The picture was to go away the day after the morrow; so he made me promise to do it early next morning. He never came down into the painting room until about ten o’clock, I went into his room bright and early, and by half past nine I had finished the head. That done, _Rafe_ (Raphael West, the master’s son) and I began to fence; I with my maul-stick, and he with his father’s. I had just driven Rafe up to the wall, with his back to one of his father’s best pictures, when the old gentleman, as neat as a lad of wax, with his hair powdered, his white silk stockings and yellow morocco slippers, popped into the room, looking as if he had stepped out of a band-box. We had made so much noise that we did not hear him come down the gallery, or open the door. ‘There, you dog,’ says I to Rafe, ‘there I have you, and nothing but your back-ground _relieves_ you.’ “The old gentleman could not help smiling at my technical joke, but soon, looking very stern, ‘Mr. Stuart,’ says he, ‘is this the way you use me?’ ‘Why! what’s the matter, sir? I have neither hurt the boy nor the background.’ ‘Sir, when you knew I had promised that the picture of his majesty should be finished to-day, ready to be sent away to-morrow, thus to be neglecting me and your promise! How can you answer it to me or to yourself?’ “‘Sir,’ said I, ‘do not condemn me without examining the easel. I have finished the picture: please to look at it.’ He did so, complimented me highly, and I had ample revenge for his, ‘It will do well enough.’” STUART’S SCHOLARSHIP. Trumbull, speaking of Stuart as he knew him in London, says, “He was a much better scholar than I had supposed he was. He once undertook to paint my portrait, and I sat every day for a week, and then he left off without finishing it, saying, ‘he could make nothing of my d----d sallow face.’ But during the time, in his conversation, I observed that he had not only read, but remembered what he had read. In speaking of the character of man, he said, ‘Linnæus is right; Plato and Diogenes call man a biped without feathers; that’s a shallow definition. Franklin’s is better--a tool-making animal; but Linnæus’ is the best--homo, animal mendax, rapax, pugnax.’” STUART’S RULE OF THE PAYMENT OF HALF PRICE AT THE FIRST SITTING.