I will, however, venture to put down some plain directions how you are to sit. First, let me tell you how you are not to sit. Don't, in your horror of a sentimental amiable look, put on yourself the air of a Diogenes, or you will be like nothing human--and if you shun Diogenes, you may put on the likeness of a still greater fool. No man living can look more wise than you; but if you fall out with wisdom, or would in your whim throw contempt on it, no one can better play the fool. You are the laughing or crying Philosopher at pleasure--but sit as neither, for in either character you will set the painter's house in a roar. I fear the very plaster figures in it will set you off--to see yourself in such motley company, with Bacchus and Hercules, and Jupiter and Saturn, with his marble children to devour. You will look Homer and Socrates in the face; and I know will make antics, throw out, and show fight to the Gladiator. This may be, if your painter, as many of them do, affect the antique; but if he be another sort of guess person, it may be worse still with you. You may not have to make your bow to a Venus Anadyomene--but how will you be able to face the whole Muggletonian synod? Imagine the "Complete Body," from the Evangelical Magazine, framed and glazed, round the walls, and all looking at you in the condemned cell. Against this you must prepare; for many country artists prefer this line to the antique. It is their connexion--and should you make a mistake and go to the wrong man, you will most assuredly be added to the Convocation, if not put to head a controversy as frontispiece. It will be in vain for you to say, "Fronti nulla fides;" "[Greek: gnothi seauton]" before you get there, or nobody will know you. Take care lest your physiognomy be canvassed by many more besides the painter. Are you prepared to have your every lineament scrutinized by every body? to hear behind a screen the disparagement of your lips, your eyes thought deceitful, and, in addition, a sentence of general ugliness passed upon you? So you must stoop to paint-pots, have daubs of reds, and yellows, and greys perked up against your nose for comparison. Your man may be a fancy mesmerizer, or mesmerize you, now that it is flying about like an epidemic, without knowing it. If he can, he will surely do it, to keep you still: that is the way to get a good sitter. Eusebius in a _coma_! answering all comers, like one of the heads in the play of Macbeth! But I was to tell you how to sit--that is the way, get into a _coma_--that will be the painter's best chance of having you; or, when he has been working for hours, he may find you a Proteus, and that you have slipped through his fingers after all his toil to catch you. I will tell you what happened to a painter of my acquaintance. A dentist sat to him two days--the third the painter worked away very hard--looked at the picture, then at his sitter. "Why, sir," said he; "I find I have been