His youth was fiery, glowing, tempestuous--and in age he discovereth no symptom of cooling. This is that which I admire in him. I hate people who meet Time half-way. I am for no compromise with that inevitable spoiler. While he lives, J.E. will take his swing.--It does me good, as I walk towards the street of my daily avocation, on some fine May morning, to meet him marching in a quite opposite direction, with a jolly handsome presence, and shining sanguine face, that indicates some purchase in his eye--a Claude--or a Hobbima--for much of his enviable leisure is consumed at Christie's, and Phillips's--or where not, to pick up pictures, and such gauds. On these occasions he mostly stoppeth me, to read a short lecture on the advantage a person like me possesses above himself, in having his time occupied with business which he _must do_--assureth me that he often feels it hang heavy on his hands--wishes he had fewer holidays--and goes off--Westward Ho!--chanting a tune, to Pall Mall--perfectly convinced that he has convinced me--while I proceed in my opposite direction tuneless. It is pleasant again to see this Professor of Indifference doing the honours of his new purchase, when he has fairly housed it. You must view it in every light, till _he_ has found the best--placing it at this distance, and at that, but always suiting the focus of your sight to his own. You must spy at it through your fingers, to catch the aërial perspective--though you assure him that to you the landscape shows much more agreeable without that artifice. Wo be to the luckless wight, who does not only not respond to his rapture, but who should drop an unseasonable intimation of preferring one of his anterior bargains to the present!--The last is always his best hit--his "Cynthia of the minute."--Alas! how many a mild Madonna have I known to _come in_--a Raphael!--keep its ascendancy for a few brief moons--then, after certain intermedial degradations, from the front drawing-room to the back gallery, thence to the dark parlour,--adopted in turn by each of the Carracci, under successive lowering ascriptions of filiation, mildly breaking its fall--consigned to the oblivious lumber-room, _go out_ at last a Lucca Giordano, or plain Carlo Maratti!--which things when I beheld--musing upon the chances and mutabilities of fate below, hath made me to reflect upon the altered condition of great personages, or that woful Queen of Richard the Second-- --set forth in pomp, She came adorned hither like sweet May. Sent back like Hollowmass or shortest day.