Alton stitches on till he is nearly twenty, educating himself at spare hours as well as he can, by the aid of Sandy Mackaye, until he acquires a certain reputation among his comrades as an uncommonly clever fellow. The old bookdealer having some mysterious acquaintanceship with Alton's uncle, informs that gentleman of the prodigy to whom he is related, whereupon there is an interview, and the nephew is presented with five shillings. Cousin George now comes, for the first time, on the _tapis_, tall, clean-limbed, and apparently good-humoured, but, as is shown in the sequel, selfish and a tuft-hunter. His maxim is to make himself agreeable to everybody, because he finds it pay: and he gives Alton a sample of his affability, by proposing a visit to the Dulwich Gallery. At this point the story becomes deliciously absurd. Young Snip, to whom pictures were a novelty, instantly fastens upon Guido's St Sebastian, of which he is taking mental measure, when he is accosted by a young lady. Although we have little space to devote to extracts, we cannot refuse ourselves the gratification of transcribing a passage which beats old Leigh Hunt's account of the interviews between Ippolito de Buondelmonte and Dianora d'Amerigo hollow. This artist, indeed, has evidently dipped his pencil in the warmest colours of the Cockney School. "A woman's voice close to me, gentle, yet of deeper tone than most, woke me from my trance. "'You seem to be deeply interested in that picture?' "I looked round, yet not at the speaker. My eyes, before they could meet hers, were caught by an apparition the most beautiful I had ever yet beheld. And what--what--have I seen equal to her since? Strange that I should love to talk of her. Strange that I fret at myself now because I cannot set down upon paper, line by line, and hue by hue, that wonderful loveliness of which--But no matter. Had I but such an imagination as Petrarch, or rather, perhaps, had I his deliberate cold, self-consciousness, what volumes of similes and conceits I might pour out, connecting that peerless face and figure with all lovely things which heaven and earth contain. As it is, because I cannot say all, I will say nothing, but repeat to the end, again and again, Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beyond all statue, picture, or poet's dream. Seventeen--slight, but rounded, a masque and features delicate and regular, as if fresh from the chisel of Praxiteles. I must try to describe, after all, you see--a skin of alabaster, (privet-flowers, Horace and Ariosto would have said, more true to nature,) stained with the faintest flush; auburn hair, with that peculiar crisped wave seen in the old Italian pictures, and the warm, dark, hazel eyes which so often accompany it; lips like a thread of vermillion, somewhat too thin, perhaps--but I thought little of that then; with such perfect finish and grace in every line and hue of her features and