think it exactly like. I wish you would tell me where it is not like?" "Why, I'd rather you should find it out yourself. Have the goodness to look at me."--And here my friend the painter declared, that he put on a most detestably affected grin of amiability.--"Well, sir, upon my word, I don't see any fault at all; it seems to me as like as it can be; I wish you'd be so good as to tell me what you mean." "Oh, sir, I'd rather not--I'd rather you should find it out yourself--look again." "I can't see any difference, sir; so if you don't tell me, it can't be altered." "Well then, with reluctance, if I must tell you, I don't think you have given my _sweet expression about the eyes_." Oh, Eusebius, Eusebius, what a mock you would have made of that man; you would have flouted his vanity about his ears for him gloriously; I would have given a crown to have had him sit to you, and you should have let me be by, to attend your colours. How we would have bedaubed the fellow before he had left the room, with his sweet eyes! But there, your patient painter must endure all that, and not give a hint that he disagrees in the opinion: or if he speak his mind on the occasion, he may as well quit the town, for under the influence of those sweet eyes, nor man, woman, nor child, will come to sit to him. And consider, Eusebius, their misery in having such sitters at all. They are not Apollos, and Venuses, nor Adonises, that knock at painters' doors. Not one in a hundred has even a tolerably pleasant face. I certainly once knew a rough-dealing artist, who told a gentleman very plainly--"Sir, I do not paint remarkably ugly people." But he came to no good. Not but that a clever fellow might do something of this kind with management, with good effect; get the reputation of being a painter of "beauties," with a little skill, make beauties of every body, and stoutly maintain that he never will have any others sit to him. I am not quite certain, that something of this kind has been practised, or I do not think I should have the art to invent it. All those who sit during a courtship, to present their portraits as lovers, I look upon it come as professed cheats, and mean to be most egregiously flattered; and if the thing succeeds through the painter's skill, within six months after the marriage, he, the painter, is called the cheat, and the portrait not in the least like. So easy is it to get out of repute, by doing your best to please them with a little flattery. You will never get into a book of beauty, Eusebius. Hitherto, the list runs in the female line. The male will soon come in, depend upon it.