My master, Mr. Bromley, when I first entered his service, was a man of about the middle age, and of rather grave and formal manners. He had not a bad heart; but I have since discovered that what appeared to my boyish fancy a hard and cold selfishness was but the exterior of those narrow prejudices which too many of that class, if not of all classes, indulge, or rather inherit. He felt that a distance ought to be preserved between himself and his servant; and what he thought he ought to do, he always did; so that I had been with him a considerable period before he even addressed a word to me which business did not constrain him to utter. He had a daughter, a girl about eighteen years of age. What a human being was Louisa Bromley! She was no beauty; but she had a face whose sweetness was never surpassed. I saw something like it afterwards in the faces of some of Raffaele's angels. The broad and serene forehead, the widely-parted eyebrow, the inexplicable mouth, the soul that pervaded the whole countenance! I can never forget that face; and, when I call it back to memory now, I admire it the more because, to use the modern jargon, there was no _intellect_ in it. There was no thought, no meditation or premeditation; but there was nature, and it was good-nature. Her gentleness and kindness soon won upon me. To be kind to me was at all times the way to win me, and the only way. I cannot express the happiness I felt at receiving and obeying any command from her. A smile, or the common courtesy of thanks from her lips, repaid me a hundred-fold for the performance of the most menial office. I had now been with Mr. Bromley about four years. I employed my leisure, of which I had a great deal, in reading. All the books I could contrive to borrow, or that fell in my way, I devoured greedily. Nor did I confine myself exclusively to one branch of reading,--I cannot call it study. But my chief delight was to peruse the lives of the great masters of painting, to make myself acquainted with the history and the comparative merits of their several performances, and to endeavour to ascertain how many and what specimens existed in this country. I had, also, a natural taste for painting, and sometimes surprised my master by the remarks I ventured to make upon productions he might happen to purchase, or which had been consigned to him for sale.