jection of a heel three inches high. His feet became pleasingly variegated with corns and bunnions, and were soon reduced to a state of premature superannuation.

I shall not speedily forget the first time I had the honour of beholding Hugh Peters. He was in full dress for the pit of the Opera. His coat was of the genuine Pomona-green, with a collar reaching to the crown of his head, basket-worked buttons made of silver, and skirts lined with white silk. His waistcoat was white, richly embroidered, and studded with three rows of small yellow buttons. Inside this were two more, cushioned and quilted, the one of scarlet silk, the other of skyblue. Canary-coloured small-clothes, with flesh-coloured silk-stockings, decorated his nether limbs; and a pump, which might emulate a vice, with a diamond buckle, showed his almost Chinese foot to exquisite advantage. His cravat, which at the least he took an hour to adjust, was fastened in the centre with a large emerald, and beneath it a waving banner of frill sported in the wanton zephyrs. A gold eyeglass with a red riband, white kid-gloves, and inordinate chapeaubras -the portrait is finished.

Hitherto Hugh had given more attention to his person than his face; and, coxcomb as he was, he had still much to learn in the minuter details of dandyism. Critically nice in the cut and fashion of his apparel, he was but a novice in the mysteries of the cosmetic art, his practice in this way scarcely extending beyond the more ordinary processes of ablution. He had, besides, certain prepossessions to overcome on this score. Notwithstanding the latitude of his foppery, he conceived that there was a fixed boundary beyond which it must not extend, and where manliness would say, "thus far shalt thou go and no farther." He would wear, for instance, a coat tight enough almost to check respiration, but would shudder at the thought of a pair of stays. He might employ an hour in brushing his hair, but he would turn with loathing from the idea of painting his face. But it is the character of every folly, and of every vice, to increase, unless the growth be timely and effectually prevented. The incipient gangrene must be met with the knife and the cautery. Hugh's attention was first directed to his visage by some one remarking that his eyebrows were rather light. There could be nothing unmanly in adding to the expression of the countenance, to which dark eyebrows so materially contributed. He began first by pencilling, next proceeded to painting, and lastly to staining his brows, with a variety of deleterious composts. He became the dupe of advertising impostors, and the most absurd distresses were the frequent result of his ill-judged experiments. In the course of a few months his brows had successively assumed all the colours of the rainbow, to the vast amusement of his friends, and his own ineffable inconvenience. He persevered, however, with a constancy worthy of a better cause, and at last hit upon a composition which produced the proper hue; but after a few applications utterly destroyed the hair, and left him literally browless! His only resource was a pair of artificial eyebrows, which formed, as may be supposed, but an imperfect deception, and an insecure substitute for the natural.

Hugh's next discovery was, that a smooth skin and clear complexion were essentials of beauty. His toilet was soon loaded with cold cream, milk of roses, botanic bloom, eau de Cologne, and soaps of all sone

rous titles borrowed from "the rich orient,” and of a variety of shades of colour and degrees of fragrance. His hands now came in for their share of attention, and he consumed immense quantities of almond paste and white wax. Not satisfied with topical applications for the purpose of improving his appearance, he used warm baths, had himself blooded and physicked regularly with the same view. He consumed three estates, which he inherited, in the expenses of the toilet. When destitute of money, he ran in debt to gratify his vanity; and for some years previous to his death he supported his elegant appearance by certain financial measures, to which, peradventure, a fastidious moralist might attach an impolite epithet. Confined in the Bench, he used to saunter about, in a rich robe de chambre, green velvet-cap, and red slippers, with an immense Turkish pipe in his mouth, from which he exhaled not "Mundungus' ill-perfuming scents," but green tea! He debilitated his frame by the use of medicine, and contracted complaints in his side and chest from continual pressure.

Dandyism is in youth only ridiculous; in age it is contemptible. We have attempted the portrait of Hugh in his earlier days. At fifty he was the most artificially constructed being in existence; he was made up from head to foot. He wore a wig, false eyebrows, false whiskers, and false mustachios. He had a complete set of false teeth, his cheeks and lips were painted, and the furrows beneath his eyes were filled up with a white paste. His clothes were stuffed out at the chest and shoulders, his waist was tightened in with stays, and he had false calves to his legs. He was altogether a walking deception-a complete lie from top to toe-a finished specimen of that most despicable of all animals-the superannuated dandy.

II.

THE SLEEPER ON MARATHON.

I LAY upon the solemn plain,
And by the funeral mound,

Where those who died not there in vain,
Their place of sleep had found.

'Twas silent where the free blood gush'd,
When Persia came array'd,-

So many a voice had there been hush'd,
So many a footstep stay'd!

I slumber'd on the lonely spot,
So sanctified by Death!

I slumber'd-but my rest was not
As theirs who lay beneath.

For on my dreams, that shadowy hour,
They rose-the chainless Dead-

All arm'd they sprung, in joy, in power,
Up from their grassy bed.

I saw their spears, on that red field,
Flash, as in time gone by!

Chased to the seas, without his shield,
I saw the Persian fly!

I woke the sudden trumpet's blast
Call'd to another fight:-

From visions of our glorious past,
Who doth not wake in might?

F. H.

TABLE TALK.-NO. X.

On Application to Study.

No one is idle, who can do any thing. It is conscious inability, or the sense of repeated failure, that prevents us from undertaking, or deters us from the prosecution of any work.

Wilson, the painter, might be mentioned as an exception to this rule; for he was said to be an indolent man After bestowing a few touches on a picture, he grew tired, and said to any friend who called in, "Now, let us go somewhere!" But the fact is, that Wilson could not finish his pictures minutely; and that those few masterly touches, carelessly thrown in of a morning, were all that he could do. The rest would have been labour lost. Morland has been referred to as another man of genius, who could only be brought to work by fits and snatches. But his landscapes and figures (whatever degree of merit they might possess) were mere hasty sketches; and he could produce all that he was capable of, in the first half-hour, as well as in twenty years. Why bestow additional pains without additional effect? What he did was from the impulse of the moment, from the lively impression of some coarse, but striking object; and with that impulse his efforts ceased, as they justly ought. There is no use in labouring, invitâ Minerva-nor any difficulty in it, when the Muse is not averse.

"The labour we delight in physics pain."

Denner finished his unmeaning portraits with a microscope, and without being ever weary of his fruitless task; for the essence of his genius was industry. Sir Joshua Reynolds, courted by the Graces and by Fortune, was hardly ever out of his painting-room; and lamented a few days, at any time spent at a friend's house or at a nobleman's seat in the country, as so much time lost. That darkly-illuminated room "to him a kingdom was:" his pencil was the sceptre that he wielded, and the three, on which his sitters were placed, a throne for Fame. Here he felt indeed at home; here the current of his ideas flowed full and strong; here he felt most self-possession, most command over others; and the sense of power urged him on to his delightful task with a sort of vernal cheerfulness and vigour, even in the decline of life. The feeling of weakness and incapacity would have made his hand soon falter, would have rebutted him from his object; or had the canvass mocked, and been insensible to his toil, instead of gradually turning to

"A lucid mirror, in which nature saw
All her reflected features,"

he would, like so many others, have thrown down his pencil in despair, or proceeded reluctantly, without spirit and without success. Claude Lorraine, in like manner, spent whole mornings on the banks of the Tiber or in his study, eliciting beauty after beauty, adding touch to touch, getting nearer and nearer to perfection, luxuriating in endless felicity-not merely giving the salient points, but filling up the whole intermediate space with continuous grace and beauty! What farther motive was necessary to induce him to persevere, but the bounty of his fate? What greater pleasure could he seek for, than that of seeing the

perfect image of his mind reflected in the work of his hand? But as is the pleasure and the confidence produced by consummate skill, so is the pain and the desponding effect of total failure. When for the fair face of nature, we only see an unsightly blot issuing from our best endeavours, then the nerves slacken, the tears fill the eyes, and the painter turns away from his art, as the lover from a mistress, that scorns him. Alas! how many such have, as the poet says,

"Begun in gladness;

Whereof has come in the end despondency and madness”—

not for want of will to proceed, (oh! no,) but for lack of power! Hence it is that those often do best (up to a certain point of common-place success) who have least knowledge and least ambition to excel. Their taste keeps pace with their capacity; and they are not deterred by insurmountable difficulties, of which they have no idea. I have known artists (for instance) of considerable merit, and a certain native rough strength and resolution of mind, who have been active and enterprising in their profession, but who never seemed to think of any works but those which they had in hand; they never spoke of a picture, or appeared to have seen one: to them Titian, Raphael, Rubens, Rembrandt, Correggio, were as if they had never been: no tones, mellowed by time to soft perfection, lured them to their luckless doom, no divine forms baffled their vain embrace; no sound of immortality rung in their ears, or drew off their attention from the calls of creditors or of hunger: they walked through collections of the finest works, like the Children in the Fiery Furnace, untouched, unapproached. With these true terræ filii the art seemed to begin and end: they thought only of the subject of their next production, the size of their next canvass, the grouping, the getting of the figures in; and conducted their work to its conclusion with as little distraction of mind and as few misgivings as a stage-coachman conducts a stage, or a carrier delivers a bale of goods, according to its destination. Such persons, if they do not rise above, at least seldom sink below themselves. They do not soar to the "highest Heaven of invention," nor penetrate the inmost recesses of the heart; but they succeed in all that they attempt, or are capable of, as men of business and industry in their calling. For them the veil of the Temple of Art is not rent asunder, and it is well: one glimpse of the Sanctuary, of the Holy of the Holies, might palsy their hands, and dim their sight for ever after!

I think there are two mistakes, common enough, on this subject; viz. that men of genius, or of first-rate capacity, do little, except by intermittent fits, or per saltum—and that they do that little in a slight and slovenly manner. There may be instances of this; but they are not the highest, and they are the exceptions, not the rule. On the contrary, the greatest artists have in general been the most prolific or the most elaborate, as the best writers have been frequently the most voluminous as well as indefatigable. We have a great living instance among writers, that the quality of a man's productions is not to be estimated in the inverse ratio of their quantity, I mean in the Author of Waverley; the fecundity of whose pen is no less admirable than its felicity. Shakspeare is another instance of the same prodigality of genius; his materials being endlessly poured forth with no niggard or fastidious

hand, and the mastery of the execution being (in many respects at least) equal to the boldness of the design. As one example among others that I might cite of the attention which he gave to his subject, it is sufficient to observe, that there is scarcely a word in any of his more striking passages that can be altered for the better. If any person, for instance, is trying to recollect a favourite line, and cannot hit upon some particular expression, it is in vain to think of substituting any other so good. That in the original text is not merely the best, but it seems the only right one. I will stop to illustrate this point a little. I was at a loss the other day for the line in Henry V.

"Nice customs curtesy to great kings."

I could not recollect the word nice: I tried a number of others, such as old, grave, &c.-they would none of them do, but seemed all heavy, lumbering, or from the purpose: the word nice, on the contrary, appeared to drop into its place, and be ready to assist in paying the reverence required. Again,

"A jest's prosperity lies in the ear

Of him that hears it."

I thought, in quoting from memory, of "A jest's success," "A jest's renown," &c. I then turned to the volume, and there found the very word that, of all others, expressed the idea. Had Shakspeare searched through the four quarters of the globe, he could not have lighted on another to convey so exactly what he meant—a casual, hollow, sounding success! I could multiply such examples, but that I am sure the reader will easily supply them himself; and they show sufficiently that Shakspeare was not (as he is often represented) a loose or clumsy writer. The bold, happy texture of his style, in which every word is prominent, and yet cannot be torn from its place without violence, any more than a limb from the body, is (one should think) the result either of vigilant pains-taking or of unerring, intuitive perception, and not the mark of crude conceptions, and "the random, blindfold blows of ignorance."

There cannot be a greater contradiction to the common prejudice, that "Genius is naturally a truant and a vagabond," than the astonishing and (on this hypothesis) unaccountable number of chefs-d'œuvre left behind them by the old masters. The stream of their invention supplies the taste of successive generations like a river: they furnish a hundred Galleries, and preclude competition, not more by the excellence than by the number of their performances. Take Raphael and Rubens alone. There are works of theirs in single Collections enough to occupy a long and laborious life, and yet their works are spread through all the Collections of Europe. They seem to have cost them no more labour than if they "had drawn in their breath and puffed it forth again." But we know that they made drawings, studies, sketches of all the principal of these, with the care and caution of the merest tyros in the art; and they remain equal proofs of their capacity and diligence. The Cartoons of Raphael alone might have employed many years, and made a life of illustrious labour, though they look as if they had been struck off at a blow, and are not a tenth part of what he produced in