He looked sideways out of his beard, as if it were an ivy-bush. “Jealousy,” said he. He gave it an ingenious twist in the air, and informed me that he was carousing. He made it shaggy with his fingers—and it was Despair; lank—and it was avarice; tossed it all kinds of ways—and it was rage. The beard did everything. “I am the Ghost of Art,” said he. “Two bob a day now, and more when its longer! Hair’s the true expression. There is no other. I SAID I’D GROW IT, AND I’VE GROWN IT, AND IT SHALL HAUNT YOU!” He may have tumbled down stairs in the dark, but he never walked down or ran down. I looked over the bannisters, and I was alone with the thunder. Need I add more of my terrific fate? It HAS haunted me ever since. It glares upon me from the walls of the Royal Academy, (except when MACLISE subdues it to his genius,) it fills my soul with terror at the British Institution it lures young artists on to their destruction. Go where I will, the Ghost of Art, eternally working the passions in hair, and expressing everything by beard, pursues me. The prediction is accomplished, and the Victim has no rest. THE WONDERS OF 1851. A certain Government office having a more than usual need of some new ideas, and wishing to obtain them from the collective mind of the country, consulted Mr. Trappem, the official solicitor—a gentleman of great experience—on the subject. “A new idea,” said he, “is not the only thing you will want; these new ideas, to be worth anything, must be reduced to practical demonstration, by models, plans, or experiments. This will cost much time, labour, and money, and be attended through its progress with many disappointments. The rule, therefore, is to _throw it open_ to the public. Let the inventive spirits of the whole public be set to work; let them make the calculations, designs, models, plans; let them try all the experiments at their own expense; let them all be encouraged to proceed by those suggestions which are sure to excite the greatest hopes and the utmost emulation, without committing the Honourable Board to anything. When at length two or three succeed, then the Honourable Board steps in, and taking a bit from one, and a bit from another, but the whole, or chief part, from no one in a direct way, rejects them all individually and collectively, and escapes all claims and contingencies. A few compliments, enough to keep alive hope, and at the same time keep the best men quiet, should finally be held out, and the competitors may then be safely left to long delays and the course of events. That’s the way.”