him, turned out to be a real right honourable gent, who had been a minister once."

The Country Parson, with whose Recreations the reading world is so well acquainted, calls to mind, in one of his Leisure Hours in Town, how disappointed he was, as a boy, on first seeing the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was Archbishop Howley. There he was, a slender, pale old gentleman, sitting in an arm-chair at a public meeting. A. K. H. B. was chiefly disappointed because there was "so little" of him. "There was just the human being. There was no background of grand accessories." The idea of the Primate of England which the boy had in some confused manner in his mind, included, as he says, a vision of the venerable towers of Lambeth—of a long array of solemn predecessors, from Thomas à Becket downwards-of great historical occasions on which the Archbishop of Canterbury had been a prominent figure; and in some way he fancied, vaguely, that he should see the primate surrounded by all these things. Dr. Howley looked so small when seen in fact, because seen without these belongings. Such at least is Dr. Boyd's rationale of the matter. Byron comes much to the same thing, when he pictures the disappointment of the two Turkish ladies, "poor girls, with swimming eyes," at their first sight of Suwarrow:

-nor was their surprise

Less than their grief (and truly not less just)
To see an old man, rather wild than wise
In aspect, plainly clad, besmeared with dust,

Stripp'd to his waistcoat, and that not too clean,
More feared than all the Sultans ever seen.

For everything seem'd resting
As they could read in all eyes.

on his nod,
Now, to them,
Who were accustom'd, as a sort of God,
To see the Sultan, rich in many a gem,
Like an imperial peacock stalk abroad
(That royal bird, whose tail's a diadem),
With all the pomp of power, it was a doubt
How power could condescend to do without.

There is a perhaps not altogether imaginary old artist in one of Mr. Wilkie Collins's fictions, who, himself in looks and manner and disposition the gentlest of mankind, glories placidly in the wildest and most frightful range of subjects which his art is capable of representing. Whoever saw him at his easel, so neat and quiet, so modest and unpretending in himself, with so serene an aspect, and "with such a weak hand to guide such bold big brushes,”—and then looked at the "frightful canvasful of terrors" which he tranquilly aggravated in fierceness and intensity with every successive touch,-found it difficult to credit the connexion between the painter and his work. The Lives of Painters are not without a fair show of parallel passages, as regards discrepancy of some kind or other, and of course in all manner of degrees, between the personnel of the artist and the products of his art.

Southey, in one of his early letters, makes the following remark on Opie: "There is a strange contrast between his genius, which is not confined to

-?

painting, and the vulgarity of his appearance,—his manners, and sometimes of his language."

Sir Martin Archer Shee, again, in one of his early letters, soon after his arrival in London in 1788, and describing certain artists, &c., to whom he bore letters of introduction, says of the same painter: "I have been introduced to Mr. Opie, who is in manners and appearance as great a clown and as stupid a looking fellow as ever I set my eyes on. Nothing but incontrovertible proof of the fact could force me to think him capable of anything above the sphere of a journeyman carpenter, so little, in this instance, has nature proportioned exterior grace to inward worth."

David Roberts reports of his first sight of J. M. W. Turner, that "my impression at the time was anything but what I had in my imagination formed of this great painter. My astonishment on

being told that it was 'The Great Turner,' almost without meaning a pun, turned my head." It is alleged, as the reason for Turner's reluctance to sit for his portrait, that he believed the public, on seeing what manner of man he looked like, would think less of his pictures. He might have been taken for the captain of a river steamer at first sight, says another fellow-artist; who, however, being a discerning spirit, is careful to add that a second would find far more in his face than belongs to any ordinary mind. A less discerning spirit, at any rate a less congenial one, describes Turner off-hand as a short, vulgar-looking man, with an ordinary head, and a coarse, red, "pimply" face, utterly devoid of any

degree of refinement or intelligence: "I cannot," adds Mr. Rippingille, "recollect any other clever man I ever saw who did not carry evidence of the fact in his face; Turner was the exception."

Mr. Gilchrist tells of Etty, during his course of study in the Louvre, that at first the French artists were amused by the unknown English painter's little insignificant figure, but soon exchanged that feeling for amazement, crying, "Who is he?" "Titian come to life again!" with similar demonstrations of excitement. But here a full stop will probably be too welcome to the reader for him to criticise it as too abrupt.

ABOUT PEOPLE WHO CAN'T SAY NO.

ON the Princess Caroline of Brunswick's coming over to England to be wedded to the Prince of Wales, it was a matter of discussion at a party, where Lady Charlotte Lindsay was present, so we read in Moore's Diary, on the authority of Lord Brougham, -what one word of English her Royal Highness, who was totally ignorant of the language, should be first taught to speak. The whole company agreed that "yes" was the most useful word, except Lady Charlotte, who suggested that "no" was twice as useful, as it so often stood for "yes." "This story Brougham said he once made use of in court, in commenting on the manner in which a witness had said no.' What suggested it to him, now," adds Moore, "was my describing the manner in which Grattan said, 'Why, no,' one day when Rogers asked him whether he and I could manage another bottle of claret." Not to name, with the deaf poet and humourist,

the mischievous quizzers,

Sharp as knives, but double as scissors,