I write you from the Studio again, as I had no paper this morning. I have been out and executed all your commissions.... I went to the British Institution yesterday, as it was varnishing-day, and saw all is a noble-looking man. They have not hung my sketch, but the _Parisina_ looks very well, as it has got a good light. I saw Mr. and Mrs. MacIan, a Scotch artist and his wife, whom I met at Mr. Etty’s. He was in perfect rapture with _Parisina_, said the price I asked was perfectly preposterous, fifty guineas. He said it was worth six times as much. You will be surprised but not displeased to hear that I have almost begun a picture for the Royal Academy--_The Banks and Braes of Bonny Doune_--one full-length figure the size of life. As it will be a very pretty thing, it might sell; at all events, it will be something to send there. But after some reflection I have decided not to begin it till three weeks before the exhibition opens, as I will then be better able to judge if it will have time. Besides, if I can get the old Judge Best to sit, I would not have time for both for certain. I have made an outline from nature for it. She is bare-foot, seated on the bank and with the water at her feet, looking round at the birds at play, which awakes a pang. I have modelled a little boy, and drawn him from Mrs. Christie’s little boy.... LETTER III. Brown was at this time preparing to work on his specimen of fresco, for the Westminster Hall competition; he was also engaged upon his cartoon of _The Spirit of Justice_ for the same competition, and upon a water-colour reproducing the composition of that cartoon. The other cartoons, which he had been removing from Westminster Hall, were proper to the competition of the preceding year--namely, _William the Conqueror gazing on the body of Harold_, and _Adam and Eve after the Fall_. All three cartoons remained in his possession up to his death in 1893, and were sold shortly afterwards to public institutions. In connexion with these cartoons, Brown names “Pickham.” I do not know who Pickham may have been, and suspect that he meant Pickford (the carrier), for he was always celebrated for mauling surnames. “The wax sketch” must have been an encaustic painting from the Harold subject, exhibited along with it in Westminster Hall. Mrs. Lucy was the wife of Mr. Charles Lucy, the painter, in whose house Brown then occupied a studio. Mr. Lucy is now almost forgotten, but was at one time an artist of some prominence, popular from the engravings after two of his large works--_Cromwell at the Deathbed of his daughter Mrs. Claypole_, and _Nelson in the Cabin of the Victory_. 35 Arlington Street, Camden Town. 6 May 1845. My blessed Wife,