“Ay!” he burst out again, “the resources of our art are still unfathomed! Pictures are yet to be painted that shall refresh men's inner souls, and help their hearts against the artificial world; and charm the fiend away, like David's harp!! The world, after centuries of lies, will give nature and truth a trial. What a paradise art will be, when truths, instead of lies, shall be told on paper, on marble, on canvas, and on the boards!!!” “Dinner's on the boarrd,” murmured Christie, alluding to Lord Ipsden's breakfast; “and I hae the charge o' ye,” pulling his sleeve hard enough to destroy the equilibrium of a flea. “Then don't let us waste our time here. Oh, Christie!” “What est, my laddy?” “I'm so preciously hungry!!!!” “C-way* then!” * Come away. Off they ran, hand in hand, sparks of beauty, love and happiness flying all about them. CHAPTER XVII. “THERE is nothing but meeting and parting in this world!” and you may be sure the incongruous personages of our tale could not long be together. Their separate paths had met for an instant in one focus, furnished then and there the matter of an eccentric story, and then diverged forever. Our lives have a general current, and also an episode or two; and the episodes of a commonplace life are often rather startling; in like manner this tale is not a specimen, but an episode of Lord Ipsden and Lady Barbara, who soon after this married and lived like the rest of the _beau monde._ In so doing, they passed out of my hands; such as wish to know how viscounts and viscountesses feed and sleep, and do the domestic (so called), and the social (so called), are referred to the fashionable novel. To Mr. Saunders, for instance, who has in the press one of those cerberus-leviathans of fiction, so common now; incredible as folio to future ages. Saunders will take you by the hand, and lead you over carpets two inches thick--under rosy curtains--to dinner-tables. He will _fete_ you, and opera you, and dazzle your young imagination with _e'p'ergnes,_ and salvers, and buhl and ormolu. No fishwives or painters shall intrude upon his polished scenes; all shall be as genteel as himself. Saunders is a good authority; he is more in the society, and far more in the confidence of the great, than most fashionable novelists. Mr. Saunders's work will be in three volumes; nine hundred and ninety pages!!!!!! In other words, this single work of this ingenious writer will equal in bulk the aggregate of all the writings extant by Moses, David, Solomon, Isaiah, and St. Paul!!! I shall not venture into competition with this behemoth of the _salon;_ I will evaporate in thin generalities.