When I am asked why I do not describe the Painter, my reply is partly the same. We have got Gaston Phoebus, and Clive Newcome, and Claude Mellot, and the goodly company of Trilby, and we shall not easily improve upon those portraits, whether highly finished or merely sketched. But in this case I have another reason for reticence. I know a good many painters, who about this time of year bid me to their studios. I have experienced before now the delicate irritability of the artistic genius, and I know that a reverential reticence is my safest course. Conversely, my reason for not describing the Actor is that I really do not know him well enough. An actor off the stage is about as exhilarating an object as a theatre by daylight. The brilliancy and the glamour have departed; the savour of sawdust and orange-peel remains. Let us render all honour to the histrion when his foot is on his native boards; but if we are wise we shall eschew in private life the society of Mr. and Mrs. Vincent Crummles, nor open our door too widely to the tribe of Costigan and Fotheringay. The mention of that great actress's name (for did not Emily Costigan, afterwards Lady Mirabel, figure as "Miss Fotheringay" on the provincial stage?) reminds me that, according to some of my critics, women played too rare and too secluded a part in my series of "Typical Developments." It is only too true, and no one knows as well as the author the amount of brilliancy and interest which has been forfeited thereby. But really it is a sacred awe that has made me mute. Even to-day, as I write, I am smarting under a rebuke recently administered to me, at a public gathering, by an outraged matron. This lady belongs to the political section of her tribe; holds man, poor man! in proper contempt; and clamours on Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's doorstep for that suffrage which is to make her truly free. At present she esteems herself little better than a Squaw, and has been heard to declare, in moments of expansive eloquence, that she was not created to be the Toy of Man--a declaration in which her hearers most heartily concurred. Well, this stern guardian of her sex's rights recently took me to task in a public place for the levity with which I had criticized a gathering of political ladies, and my nerve has scarcely rallied from the sudden onslaught. Had I been more myself I might even yet have tried my unskilled hand at female portraiture. Perhaps, in the spirit of that Cambridge professor who calls William II. "quite the nicest Emperor I know," I might have begun in the most illustrious circles, and have sketched the stone-laying and bazaar-opening activities of Royal Princesses. Or, yielding precedence to the Church, I might have discoursed of Episcopal ladies and have traced the influence of a tradition received from the beatified Mrs. Proudie. "_We_ had a very nice Ordination this Trinity," says one lady of this class. "The Bishop and I were much disappointed by the poor response of the