which the latter had had specially made, and in which he really fancied himself, handed it to me, and to Caldecott's horror, and almost before he was conscious that he had been made ridiculous by the wretched remnant which had been sent from Bow Street for me, the curtain was rung up. I confess I have a certain amount of pity, closely akin to contempt, for the artist who must have the actual character he wants to paint, who cannot use a model merely for reference, but paints in everything like a photograph. Some artists call such feebleness conscientiousness, but to me it seems mere weakness. Must an author paint each character in his book, or an actor take his every impersonation on the stage, minutely from some living model? Surely observation and natural originality is more than the photographic copying of your "conscientious" artist! Worse feebleness still it is when an artist has to paint a well-known character, say King Lear or Mary Queen of Scots, and goes about hunting for a living person as near as possible in appearance to the original, and then costumes and slavishly reproduces him or her, without any show of judgment or insight after the model is once selected. And this lack of insight into character seems deplorably prevalent among our figure painters, for how often we see in the exhibitions the model with a "good head" tamely reproduced over and over again--here as a monk, there as a Polonius, Thomas a Becket, a "blind beggar," "His Excellency," a pensioner, or painted by some artist who wants to make a bid for portraiture as "A portrait of a gentleman"! Black and white men have to introduce so many characters into their work, they are obliged to invent them; but it is a curious fact that this facility disappears at times. The late Mr. Fred Barnard, clever as he was at inventing character for his black and white work, found, when he was painting in oil, that confidence had left him, and he spent several days wandering about London to find real characters for a picture he was painting representing the jury in "Pilgrim's Progress." One day in Oxford Street he saw a hansom-cab driver with a face besotted with drink and "ripe" for production as a slave to Bacchus. Barnard hailed the hansom, jumped in, and directed the jehu to drive him to his studio on Haverstock Hill. In going up the Hampstead Road a tram-car ran over a child. Barnard was terribly upset by the touching sight, and told the driver to pull up at the nearest tavern. Getting out, he looked at his "subject," intending to invite him to refreshment before taking him on to his studio, where he intended to paint him. To his horror the face of the bibulous cabman had lost all its "colour," and was of a pale greenish hue. [Illustration: A TRANSFORMATION.] "That was horful, sir, warn't it? It'll upset me for a week." The disappointed artist dismissed his "subject." [Illustration]