“Then you should have quoted correctly, sir.--‘Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,’--that’s the line, and you can’t better it. Mr Graham always pulled me up if I didn’t quote correctly.-- By-the-bye, sir, some say it’s _kings barbaric_, but there’s _barbaric gold_ in Virgil.” “I dare say you are right,” said Lenorme. “But you’re far too learned for me.” “Don’t make game of me, sir. I know two or three books pretty well, and when I get a chance I can’t help talking about them. It’s so seldom now I can get a mouthful of Milton. There’s no cave here to go into, and roll the mimic thunder in your mouth. If the people here heard me reading loud out, they would call me mad. It’s a mercy in this London, if a working-man get loneliness enough to say his prayers in!” “You do say your prayers then?” asked Lenorme, looking at him curiously. “Yes; don’t you, sir? You had so much sense about the beasts I thought you must be a man that said his prayers.” Lenorme was silent. He was not altogether innocent of saying prayers; but of late years it had grown a more formal and gradually a rarer thing. One reason of this was that it had never come into his head that God cared about pictures, or had the slightest interest whether he painted well or ill. If a man’s earnest calling, to which of necessity the greater part of his thought is given, is altogether dissociated in his mind from his religion, it is not wonderful that his prayers should by degrees wither and die. The question is whether they ever had much vitality. But one mighty negative was yet true of Lenorme: he had not got in his head, still less had he ever cherished in his heart, the thought that there was anything fine in disbelieving in a God, or anything contemptible in imagining communication with a being of grander essence than himself. That in which Socrates rejoiced with exultant humility, many a youth now-a-days thinks himself a fine fellow for casting from him with ignorant scorn. A true conception of the conversation above recorded can hardly be had except my reader will take the trouble to imagine the contrast between the Scotch accent and inflection, the largeness and prolongation of vowel sounds, and, above all, the Scotch tone of Malcolm, and the pure, clear articulation, and decided utterance of the perfect London speech of Lenorme. It was something like the difference between the blank verse of Young and the prose of Burke. The silence endured so long that Malcolm began to fear he had hurt his new friend, and thought it better to take his leave. “I’ll go and write to Mrs Courthope--that’s the housekeeper-- to-night, to send up the things at once. When would it be convenient for you to go and look at some horses with me, Mr Lenorme?” he said. “I shall be at home all to-morrow,” answered the painter, “and ready to go with you any time you like to come for me.” As he spoke he held out his hand, and they parted like old friends. CHAPTER XXIV. A LADY.