it only proves that wise men have for some time suspected, that love is more dumb than blind, and the faults of our faultless idols are noted, however unconsciously. Neither thumb-screws nor hot coals--nothing probably but repentance after matrimony--would have drawn from Philip Ballister, in words, the same correction of his mistress's foible that had oozed out through his treacherous pencil! Cupid is often drawn as a stranger pleading to be "taken in," but it is a miracle that he is not invariably drawn as a portrait-painter. A bird tied to the muzzle of a gun--an enemy who has written a book--an Indian prince under the protection of Giovanni Bulletto (Tuscan for John Bull),--is not more close upon demolition, one would think, than the heart of a lady delivered over to a painter's eyes, posed, draped, and lighted with the one object of studying her beauty. If there be any magnetism in isolated attention, any in steadfast gazing, any in passes of the hand hither and thither--if there be any magic in _ce doux demi-jour_ so loved in France, in stuff for flattery ready pointed and feathered, in freedom of admiration, "and all in the way of business"--then is a lovable sitter to a love-like painter in "parlous" vicinity (as the new school would phrase it) to sweet heart-land! Pleasure in a vocation has no offset in political economy as honor has ("the more honor the less profit"), or portrait-painters would be poorer than poets. And, _malgre_ his consciousness of the quality which required softening in his cousin's beauty, and _malgre_ his rare advantages for obtaining over her a lover's proper ascendency, Mr. Philip Ballister bowed to the stronger will of Miss Fanny Bellairs, and sailed for France on his apprenticeship to Mammon. * * * * *