And such a life as this was the realisation of his brightest dream. For these days of unrest and excitement, for these studious nights had the young man from Shannonville toiled and struggled. He had attained a high position in his profession, and he loved his profession. What more could the heart of man desire? Venus Anadyomene divinely smiling amidst a cloud of silvery spray, radiant with vermilion and carmine, ultramarine and Naples yellow, could be no more delightful to the mind of William Crawford, the painter, than were the cases of Giddles and Giddles _v._ Clithery, Shavington _v._ The Estremadura Soap-boiling Company (limited), and many others, to Laurence O'Boyneville, Q.C. What reason have the painter and the poet, the sculptor and the musician, to be thankful that the arts for which they slave, the labours to which they devote their lives, are beautiful for all the world as well as for the labourers! If Cecil's husband had been a painter she would have been content to stand beside his easel while his bright fancies grew into life upon the canvas. Every new picture would have been an era in her existence as well as in his. No curve of an arm or wrist, no pose of a head, no undulation of a drapery that would not have made subject for pleasant talk and spirited discussion. The painter and his wife may go lovingly hand-in-hand upon the great highway to Fame's starry temple; and if she has been his model now and then, and if she has suggested the subject of a picture, or devised some happy alteration of an attitude, she seems to have had a part in her husband's work. To all time the wives of Rubens will be associated with his genius; so long as the work of Raffaelle endures, the world will remember the woman he loved and painted. But what part can the barrister's wife have in his triumphs? Except amongst certain sets the world does not talk much of popular barristers; and the wife of a legal luminary hears little praise of her husband from the lips of strangers. A woman must be strong-minded indeed who can interest herself in the technicalities of a dispute arising out of the purchase of sundry bales of cotton, or the winding-up of the affairs of a bubble company. There is something in the very paraphernalia of the legal profession which, on the threshold, repels all feminine sympathy. The crimson bag, the red tape, the green ferret; the slippery blue paper, which to the unprofessional pen is utterly impracticable for all literary use,--every thing seems alike symbolical of a hopeless dryness and arid barrenness, amidst which no solitary blossoms, no lonely, accidental prison-flower can put forth its tender shoots.