sure if some a' them partfolers in the corners hadn't been brushed and rubbed. they'd have walked by theirselves, they was that standin' in dust. Poor young lady! she's got a horkard temper to deal with now I suppose he'll take hisself off in a huff to the public-gentle folks calls 'em clubs, I believe, but I take it it's the same meanin' in the hend to the wives as is left at home by theirselves."

Paul stood thinking a few minutes, and then he rang the bell.

Even the usually trim, prim parlor-maid seemed to be participating in the general disarray. She looked soiled and untidy.

She stood at the door, but Paul frowned, and beckoned her across the wet floor.

"Where's your mistress ?"

"Mistress said, sir, I was to tell you, if you came in, sir, that she got a note this morning, asking her to take luncheon with a lady from Ashton, at the Langham Hotel, sir. Mistress said she felt sure you wouldn't come in till late, but I was to say so if you did."

"Did you hear the lady's name?" said Paul.

"Mrs. Bright, I think, sir." The girl had never heard Mr. Whitmore speak so harshly. She looked at the door.

"Can't you make that woman leave off this miserable slopping ?" he said, "and can't you and Anne set to work to make the room straight at once? I won't have that woman touch even a portfolio."

"Yes, sir," said the girl demurely, but inwardly she laughed.

It was so likely she and Anne would put the carpet on the wet floor, and work themselves like horses in moving those great lumbering things, when Missis was going to pay the woman on purpose that they mightn't have to do rough work; the parlor maid said this to herself, with the usual contempt inherent in the servant mind for the domestic interference of masters, while she held the door open for Mr. Whitmore to pass out, with more than ever of "prunes and prism" in the set of her demure mouth.

Paul fulfilled the charwoman's prediction, by dining at his club, and then he went off to the rooms of two young artists at the other end of London, where he got laughed at for his quiet, domestic ways, till he began to think himself a pattern husband.

remembrance of the studio came to him with a shudder, and he shrank too from seeing Nuna.

"I wish that old chattering Mrs. Bright had stayed at home; she is sure to say or do something foolish."

Paul was vexed that Nuna should have gone off in this sudden way without consulting him. It did not occur to him that his unpunctual habits had made his wife secure of his absence, and delighted to shorten one of her long, solitary days, by a chat with her old friend.

CHAPTER XL.

IN WHICH PAUL "TREATS" RESOLUTION,

It was growing dark when Paul once more set out on his way home.

When he came into the hall, the gas was not lighted; it seemed to him he heard Nuna's voice on the staircase, and a sudden gladness came back to him: he ran upstairs; a tall man coming down nearly knocked him over.

It was Will Bright. The two men begged pardon, and then recognized each other in the dim light.

"I've brought Nuna home," said Will; "she stopped talking with my mother in hopes you would come and fetch her; we should have been so glad to see you.'

"Thank you : Paul spoke stiffly: then he added, "Won't you come up and have some supper?"

"No, thank you," and the two men shook hands and parted.

"Poor darling," Will sighed to himself, "is this the way that fellow neglects her? I'd like to give him a good thrashing."

"Great stupid lout," said Paul as he went upstairs, all the glad light gone from his eyes. "How could Nuna bring the fellow here? She knows I can't bear him." Nuna ran to him as soon as he opened the door.

She was radiant: she had had a delightful day; the Brights had been so kind; they had taken her to see exhibitions and for a drive in the park; she had so enjoyed herself. Paul listened; he was pleased she had been happy, but his discomfiture had not passed away; and in the midst of her animated flow of talk Nuna checked herself.

"Doesn't Paul like me to enjoy myself without him? Yes, it was selfish of me ; and a double flow of tenderness came to

"What have you been doing all day, darling? I was half in hopes you would get home before I did, and come to fetch me. You would have come if you had known in time, wouldn't you?" "No; I did come home, Nuna. I came home to dinner. To tell you the truth, I was so savage at the mess I found the room in, and at the damage and mischief done, that I was in no hurry to come home again."

He spoke gravely and as he thought very leniently, considering all he had suffered, and the terrible mistake his wife had made in setting such an outrageous proceeding on foot without duly consulting him; and if Nuna had been sitting indoors moping after her usual fashion, she would have taken his reproof to heart, and expressed due contrition; but the open-air drive, the sight of her friends and their kindness, had brought back her old girlish spirits.

She laughed heartily in Paul's face, and then nestled close up to him.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, darling; but, you dear old fidget, why didn't you stay away, and then you never would have known anything? I meant to tell you, of course : she blushed at Paul's look of annoyance. "And I am very, very sorry I was not in when you came, but stay at home to-morrow instead, darling, won't you? and we'll be so happy. It feels all so clean and comfortable; now do sit down and listen; I have so much to tell you still."

Paul sat and listened, while Nuna rattled on full of the sparkle of happy feelings; but he was silent; he was profoundly vexed, and yet too proud to show his vexation.

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"There is nothing like association," he said to himself. "A few hours with these commonplace people, and Nuna is quite changed; I could not have believed she would laugh at me when she must have seen I was vexed. I won't damp her spirits now, but I'll take care that this sort of upset is not repeated; if it is, I paint away from home."

"Poor old Will," said Nuna. "I wish you would call on him, darling, and be a little kind to him."

"I don't mind calling," Paul smiled, "but I don't think I can be very pleasant society for him, and to tell you the truth I think he's a lout."

Nuna blushed: she thought Paul the least bit ungenerous. "Poor Will, you are hard on him; he asked very kindly after you ;" and then she left off talking about the Brights.

She was so thoroughly gay and happy that the evening passed over without any further cloud. Paul wisely kept his eyes off his treasures: but as soon as he was left alone he took a lamp and gave a rapid glance at the new arrangements.

So far as he could see, everything was much as usual, but when he remembered the clay statuette he felt as angry as ever.

"It was unjustifiable. So much mischief might have been done. I wish those confounded Brights had stayed at home. That's the worst of country acquaintance: they come upon you when you wish for them least. Nuna will want to spend every day with that silly old chatterbox."

Next morning was full of sunshine, and Paul even was forced to admit that the studio was all the pleasanter from the absence of dust: he was mollified, too, by finding his wife had carefully stowed away his chief rarities in her own little room— a tiny retreat hardly bigger than a large closet, a striking contrast to Patty's luxurious sitting-room.

It seemed to Paul this morning that he had been unreal and exaggerated in his ideas of Mrs. Downes and himself. There could be no greater harm in his going to Park Lane to paint her portrait, than in the pleasure Nuna showed in talking of Will Bright.

"From what Mr. Beaufort said to me, that fellow will go on loving Nuna in his calf-like way to his dying day, and yet she evidently considers herself free to talk to him and walk with him. The truth is, I am too strait-laced in my notions: I did not know I was such a prig. Why should I lose the money I mean to make that fellow Downes pay for his wife's portrait just for a squeamish scruple? I'm sure she can't care a rap for me, and I can answer for myself. When the picture's done I shall go my way, and Patty will go hers, and I can't see that we shall be the worse for having met again."

He tore up the note he had written at the club to Mr. Downes, and resolved that he would keep the appointment he had made with Patty.

(To be continued.)

stands alone, enabled him to give that splendid and truthful beauty to his figures, and to dwell on subtleties of modelling and of outline, which are not to be found in Luca Signorelli's work. Astonishing as is the power of Luca Signorelli's imagination, and admirably true as are the action and expression of his figures, he fell short precisely on that point of realism which makes the enormous gulf between him and the greater artist. Michelangelo I consider the greatest realist the world has ever seen. The action, expression, and drawing of his figures, down to the minutest folds of drapery and points of costume, down to the careful finish given to the most trivial accessories (where used), such as the books his figures hold, and the desks they write on, are all studied from the point of view of being as true to Nature as they can be made. He left it to his imitators and followers to make human bodies like the sacks of potatoes I have alluded to; he who never made, never could make, a fault of anatomy in his life, has had such followers, who gloried in thinking how Michelangelesque was their work. It is his followers, again, and not he, who make their saints and prophets write with pens without ink, on scrolls of paper without desks, and suchlike absurdities.

And here there is a very general misconception, which I must dwell on for a short time, as it is so very important that it should be set right. I have heard it said again and again, by artists (who ought to know better) and others, that Michelangelo's works may be grand in style, they may be imaginative, they may even be beautiful (sometimes), but they cannot be said to be true to Nature on account of their exaggeration. You will all recognize that this is the common way in which Michelangelo's works are spoken of. Now, my first notion connected with a lecture was that of vindicating Michelangelo's honor on this point. There are, I think, many reasons, and perhaps some good ones, for this opinion. The best and most universally known of his works is the Last Judgment, in the Sistine Chapel, a work executed when he was sixty years old, by which time his magnificent manner had possibly developed into somewhat of a mannerism; that is to say, that whereas throughout his life the necessities of his subjects, chosen, no doubt,

especially for the purpose, obliged him to depict the human form in every beautiful variety of action and position, in his later years this pleasure of exercising his ingenuity in inventing and correctly representing difficulties of foreshortening seemed to grow upon him, and in some parts of the Last Judgment, especially in the upper part, outweighed the more simple dignity with which most of it is invested. The stupendous work which does most to make his name immortal is on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, executed twenty years before the Last Judgment, which is on the end wall of the same chapel, was done; and it is on this work that I take my stand in placing Michelangelo as the chief of realistic painters; not so much on the Last Judgment, tremendous as it is both in conception and execution. Another, and the most important reason, for the charge of exaggeration, is that from some cause or another no great man has ever suffered so much at the hands of the engravers. All with one accord have taken it into their heads that Michelangelo's work cannot be properly copied unless limbs and muscles are exaggerated in a way which they would never dream of using with another man's work; in fact, they think it necessary to import into their work every exaggerated defect which they find in the works of his imitators, or rather the defects of exaggeration to be found in the preposterous school formed upon Raphael. Raphael indeed himself is not exempt from having made exaggerated imitations of the great master. The "Incendio del Borgo" is perhaps the beginning of that lumpy and inflated style so different from the simple and elegant work of Michelangelo. Engravers, at all events, find that Michelangelo is not so Michelangelesque as they expected, so they try to improve upon him; and the greatest master of drawing the world has ever seen has had the most ill-drawn travesties of his finest works passed off on those who are unable to visit the originals and judge for themselves. Still those who have eyes to see can very plainly make out from the wretched stuff that engravers have given us what manner of man it was whose work was thus travestied. It is obvious that the mind which could conceive figures so amazingly grand in intention could not be guilty of altering Nature for the purpose of producing the grotesque forms and

faces shown us by the engravers. I, fortunately, a little time ago, had the opportunity of verifying for myself what I had surmised to be true, but much as I expect ed in the way of beauty before entering the Sistine, I was prepared rather to be overwhelmed by a magnificent grandeur of imagination and design than to be charmed by refined beauties of form and face; and another element of beauty I found which I had not expected, for the engravers carefully avoid representing it in their copies, and on a point of excellence for which the palm has generally been given to another painter-I mean the amazing subtlety, variety, and truth of expression in the faces of the Titanic beings who sit enthroned over one's head in that amazing work. Raphael has been considered the master of expression and beauty of face; Michelangelo of grandeur of form. I find the latter supreme in all. He it was who found in Nature what beauty and what grandeur lie in the most trivial actions, and first had the power to depict them. Raphael's receptive mind seized at once on the idea, adapted it to his style, and followed close on the great master's steps. The possibility of verifyign the truth of what I say is now fortunately within reach of all amateurs of art, for within the last eighteen months this amazing work of which I am speaking, in which the variety is so great that Vasari may well say, "That no man who is a painter now cares to seek new inventions, attitudes, draperies, originality, and force of expression"-this great work has been reproduced in all its details in photography; the enterprising German who has rendered this most important service having taken no less than one hundred and forty negatives, all (with the exception of seven or eight from the Last Judgment) being taken from the ceiling. These photographs are a revelation in art. No one until now who has not seen the original has had the slightest idea of what Michelangelo's

work is.

I will allude first to the naked figures which sit in pairs on the architectural projections which form the sides of the prophets' thrones. Each pair of these holds between them a large medallion, on which, in imitation of a relief in bronze and gold, is painted a subject from the Book of Kings, or supports a ponderous festoon of leaves and acorns-a common feature of NEW SERIES.-VOL. XIV., No. 3.

decoration in classical architecture, but employed in a totally new way by Michelangelo, which the original inventor of the idea was far from dreaming of. For there are no less than twenty of these figures, and Michelangelo has taken advantage of their employment to represent not only almost every kind of action of which the position of these figures could suggest to his great genius, but for the display of every variety and mood of the human mind. One of them seems the very type of life and activity: he laughs as he shifts the ribbon, by which he supports his medallion, from one shoulder to the other; he is in the act of uncrossing his legs as he does it, and the great master of design has arrested him in the middle of this complicated, and to any other artist almost impossible, movement. An instantaneous photograph could not seize on the action with more absolute accuracy; and there is that look of life in his light and active limbs which almost makes you expect him to continue his movement. More grand is another, as he sits calmly reposing on his ponderous burden, profoundest and most melancholy thought reflected on his god-like face. Others seem to catch some faint sound of the inspiration which the cherubs of God are whispering in the ear of the prophet or sybil below, and start with affrighted and awe-stricken looks. There is another laughing figure even more beautiful than the one described; he lifts with ease his heavy weight of leaves and acorns, while his fellow looks at him. with an angry glance as he struggles to raise his own share which has slipped from his shoulder. There is a pair who converse over their task, and another pair perform it with careless indifference, as if weary and uninterested; and all these various figures are depicted with a realism of expression and action, a beauty of form and face, an absolute accuracy of anatomical expression, a splendor of light and shade, a roundness of modelling and minuteness of finish to the perfect drawing of every nail on hand or foot, and the graceful turn of every lock of hair, which never flags for a moment, and which is never at fault. The beauty of the heads of these figures is beyond all that ever was done in art; nothing of Raphael's to my mind approaches them; and on one point he has utterly surpassed the Greeks-while giving to many of his faces the beautiful refine

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