That same morning, about seven o'clock, there stood in this apartment a young man arranging French chalks, crayons, painting-brushes, and colours, which lay about in disorder, just as they had been last used. A tall, pointed easel stood a few feet from the wall, near it a stand with its colour-box and palettes. There were classical vases scattered about; plaster-casts from the best models; statues and busts of porphyry, and carving from the marbles of Lydia and Pentelicus. The sculptured head of a warrior, a group of gladiators; a Niobe, in its weeping sorrow, and the Apollo Belvedere, bas-reliefs, copied from the statue of the Discobolon, and other studies from the antique. There was beauty in all its aspects, but no deformity, no detached limbs or misshapen forms: as if the collector cared not to excite unpleasing thoughts. On the walls hung copies from, and _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of, the masters of many lands: Michael Angelo, Salvator Rosa, Rembrandt; groups by Raphael; beautiful angels of Guido; Carlo Dolce, Titian, all were represented there, with Leonardo da Vinci, the highly-gifted and unhappy. Of the Spanish school there were few specimens, Velasquez, Murillo, and one after Zurbarban; and less of the French, Nicholas Poussin, Le Brun, and Watteau; but there were several of the Flemish and Dutch masters, copies and originals, Van Dyck, Ruysdael, William Van de Welde, and the brothers Abraham and Isaac Ostade. The gentleman finished his preparations, arranged his palettes, rolled the stand nearer, and sat down before his easel. But, ere he began his task, he glanced up at the window nearest him, and, rising, stood upon a chair, and pulled the green shade lower down to regulate the light. Then he began to work, now whistling a scrap of a popular melody, now humming a few bars, and then bursting out, in a voice of the deepest melody, with a full verse. He was copying a portrait by Velasquez, and had made considerable progress towards its completion. It was a lovely female head, supposed to be a representation of Mary Magdalen. But not even the head on which he was working; not all the portraits and sculptured busts around; not Girodet's "Endymion" by his side, betrayed more winning beauty than did the artist's own face and form. The rare intellect of his open brow, the sweet smile on his delicate lips, the earnest glance from his deep-blue eyes, _these_ could not be imitated by painter's brush or Parian marble. Yet, though his head was cast in the most shapely mould, not to be hidden by the waves of the dark, luxuriant hair, and the pale features, regular to a fault, were of almost womanish beauty, it was not all this, but the _expression_ which so won upon a beholder. Lord John Seymour was right when he said the countenance was more prepossessing than handsome--for you have been prepared no doubt to hear that the painter was Frederick St. John--because in the singular fascination of the expression was forgotten the beauty of the features.