I have said that Morrison thought more highly of his genius than even his country-folk. As the member of a highly liberal profession, too, he naturally enough took rank as a gentleman. Geniuses were eccentric in those days, and gentlemen not very moral; and Morrison, in his double capacity of genius and gentleman, was skilful enough to catch the eccentricity of the one class and the immorality of the other. He raked a little, and drank a great deal; and when in his cups said and did things which were thought very extraordinary indeed. But though all acknowledged his genius, he was less successful in establishing his gentility. There was, indeed, but one standard of gentility in the country at the time, and fate had precluded the painter from coming up to it; no one was deemed a gentleman whose ancestors had not been useless to the community for at least five generations. It must be confessed, too, that some of Morrison’s schemes for establishing his claims were but ill laid. On one occasion he attended an auction of valuable furniture in the neighbouring town, and though a wanderer at the time, as he had been all his life long, and miserably poor to boot, he deemed it essential to the maintenance of his character, that, as all the other gentlemen present were bidding with spirit, he should now and then give a spirited bid too. He warmed gradually as the sale proceeded, offered liberally for beds and carpets, and made a dead set on a valuable pianoforte. The purchasers were sadly annoyed; and the auctioneer, who was a bit of a wag, and laboured to put down the painter by sheer force of wit, found that he had met with as accomplished a wit as himself. Morrison lost the piano, and then fell in love with a moveable wooden house, which had served as a sort of meat preserve, and was secured by a strong lock. “You had better examine it inside, Mr. Morrison,” said the auctioneer; “in fact, the whole merit of the thing lies inside.” Morrison went in, and the auctioneer shut and locked the door. There could not be a more grievous outrage on the feelings of a gentleman; but though the poor man went bouncing against the cruel walls of his prison like an incarcerated monkey, and grinned with uncontrollable wrath at all and sundry through its little wire-woven window, pity or succour was there none; he was kept in close durance for four long hours till the sale terminated, and found his claim to gentility not in the least strengthened when he got out.