"Well, Mr. Whitewash," said he, as Clarian came in, "how are you at this present writing? You _look_ as if you had been dieting on Gamboge and Flake White. Take care, young man, or you'll put us students to the cost of a tombstone with a Latin epitaph for you, yet,--beginning, _Interfecit se_.--How comes on the Art? You've given the go-by to _Ego_ and _Non-Ego_, I suppose, and have resolved to achieve the very [Greek: kudos] upon a ten-foot whitewashed wall, eh? _Soit_,--but what results? Can you say yet, as Correggio did when he saw the St. Cecilia of Raphael, '_Anch' io son pittore_'? or do you intend to limit your ambition, _à la_ Dick Tinto, to the effecting of two liquidations in one by the restoration of tavern-signs?" "Please do not taunt me, Mac, for I am cast down, almost. I have the grandest conception, but the life-touch escapes me. It is in vain I seek it: we cannot do a thing properly, unless we _feel_ it; passion will not be simulated. What we know, and can do well, must all be repeated from our own experience, says St. Simon,--and I agree with him." "St. Simon be--hanged!" quoth Mac. "So, it seems, the Metaphysic is not abandoned. St. Simon, forsooth!--why, his doctrine was, that, to comprehend the nature of crime, one had first to commit crime himself. Pah! according to that, he who would most thoroughly learn the philosophy of our carnal lusts must exchange natures with the goat. Pray, why do not you solicit Herr Urian to give you a hircine metamorphosis, Clarian?"