"H'm, yes, it's very pretty," said Flo, after contemplating the picture under the shadow of two pretty jewel-twinkling hands arched over her piquant eyebrows; "but isn't Gretchen's arm a _leetle_ out of drawing? I'm sure I could never get _my_ arm into that position; but I dare say people's arms were more flexible in those days. How awfully blue you've made Mephistopheles; but I'm very glad you haven't allowed him to cross his legs. _Why_ a diabolical person should always cross his legs is a mystery that I have never been able to fathom. It's very nice, papa; but I don't like it so well as 'Pericles and Aspasia.' Your proclivities are classic, you dear old thing, so you had better stick to your Lempriere, and let us have rosy gods and goddesses _ad infinitum_." "_Ad nauseam_, perhaps," said the painter sadly. The critics had been very hard upon William Crawford, and there had been people besotted enough to utter the shameful word "sensualism" in connection with the purest and simplest creature who ever worshipped the divinity of beauty. And then there were all the host of funny little writers who wrote facetious little criticisms upon the great man's pictures. His Cupid had the mumps, his Psyche was in the last stage of scarlet fever, his Alcibiades was a butcher's boy, his Timandra a scorbutic shrew, his Boadicea a prize-fighter disguised in female raiment. The funny little writers who could not have sketched the outline of a pump-handle correctly, had fine fun out of William Crawford. He was happy in spite of all adverse criticism, and had succeeded in spite of his critics. Of course there were some who knew what they were writing about; and to such adverse opinion as he felt to be just William Crawford bowed his head meekly, not too proud to believe that he could have done better if he had "taken more pains." Who could be more acutely conscious than he was of his shortcomings? Whose eyes were keener than his to perceive the weak spots in his work? There is no finer tonic for the true worker than adverse criticism. The friend's lavish praise may enervate: the foe's hardest usage braces and fortifies. Guy Patin, in a criticism on Sir Thomas Brownie, which in the Christian benevolence of its tone is not altogether unlike some criticism of the nineteenth century--regrets that "the man is alive, because he may grow worse." How completely the slashing critics of the present day seem to forget that so long as the man is alive, it is possible for him to grow better!