So the young lady came very often to the noble tapestried painting-room, into which half the contents of Mr. Woodgate's shop seemed to have been imported, so rich was the gorgeous chamber in black oak cabinets and stamped-leather-cushioned chairs, coloured marbles and mediæval armour majolica vases and Venetian glass. The painter loved beautiful things, and spent his money as recklessly as Aladdin or Alexandre Dumas. For how was it possible that a man could be careful of vulgar pounds and shillings under whose magic-working hand human grandeur and human beauty developed into being--who knew but two rivals, Rubens and Nature--and who could afford to stand comparison with the first? William Crawford was a painter in the highest and grandest sense of the word; and he wasted his money and sold his pictures for a song when the whim seized him, and scattered little water-colour bits in the scrap-books of beautiful high-born feminine mendicants, which, collected together, would have realised a small fortune at Christie's. It was only when judicious friends with business habits stepped in and insisted upon negotiating affairs for the great painter, that Mr. Crawford received large prices for his pictures, and found a satisfactory row of pencil figures under the last pen-and-ink entry in his banking book. The story of the painter's youth and manhood was not without a touch of sadness. It was the old, old story of a brilliant career and a broken life. William Crawford had not sprung into Fame's ample lap with one daring bound. His progress had been slow and laborious, and there had been a few silver threads mingled with his auburn hair before the laurel crown descended on his forehead, or the nimbus of glory made a light about his earnest face. He had seen other men pass him by--his companions of the Academy, the students who had sat by his side,--he had seen them go by him to take their places amongst the victors, great men in their way, most of them; but how weak and puny was the greatest compared to him! He had so much to endure, and he bore it all so meekly! So patient was he in the sublime resignation of conscious genius, which knows that it _must_ triumph, that he grew by-and-by to be set down as a dull plodding fellow, who would never do any thing worth looking at. Year after year--year after year--his pictures came back upon him from the Academy, from the British Institution, rejected! rejected! rejected! Yet he was William Crawford all the time, and knew himself, and the sovereign power of his hand. Meek and mighty spirit to wait so long, to labour so patiently, hoarding thy strength, and adding to thy power day by day, as a miser swells his pile of vulgar gold! The day came at last, but not all at once. Pictures were accepted, and "skyed:" critics talked about coldness, and blackness, and chalkiness: friends were compassionate, and shoulders were shrugged with polite despair. The poor man had really no idea of colour!