You remember the picture I showed you when half completed, which I then intended

6

calling A Greek Study,' of a woman lean

ing on a vase, and resting her head on her arms in an attitude of graceful coquetry? With that picture commences the history of my life. You may remember telling me, that if I could only render the expression of the face free from the insipidity common to all ideal faces, my picture would be a success. I had taken as a model for the pose of my figure Romney's portrait of Lady Hamilton, as it afforded me a good opportunity to display my talent in painting arms, hands, neck, and bust; for flesh-colouring, I always knew, was my forte. With the manner in which I had executed the figure of my portrait I was perfectly content. Its pose was graceful, and so true to life, that you said you expected to see its bust heave with respiration. I had resolved to

make it a success, and had put out all my strength in delineating with the most preRaphael-like minuteness every detail of my picture; but yet I was dissatisfied with its chief feature-the expression of the face. You said it was insipid, and advised me, instead of endeavouring to portray a creation of my imagination, to take some fair face as my model. I, however, was wedded to my ideal portrait. It was a face that had haunted my imagination when at Rome, and was one, to my mind, more beautiful than I had ever seen in life. I had sketched it frequently in crayon, but this was the first time I had ever attempted to depict it on canvas; and the more I painted, the farther its expression was removed from what I intended. It worried me.

I was then suffering from congestion of the liver, brought on from overwork; and the doctors recommended me to go to that

fashionable watering-place Weedoncliffe, in the south of Devon, and take its efficacious and disagreeable waters. I resolved to follow their advice, and to finish my picture in the country, in the hopes that change of air might make me portray more satisfaction my ideal portrait.

to my

'When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme

In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights;
Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best

Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their antique pen would have exprest
E'en such a beauty as you master now.'

EEDONCLIFFE is one of those

charming little seaside nooks

which abound in England, and

which for some three months in the year are marked by Fashion as an agreeable place of resort for her followers. The inhabitants, proud of their town having been selected as a fashionable watering-place, have done, and I believe are still doing, all in their

power to gratify the wishes and tastes of their annual visitors, by rendering what was once beautiful from its natural simplicity stiff, cockneyfied, and would-be artistic.

The time that I had chosen for my visit was of course out of the season, and I could therefore enjoy walking about on the sands or on the esplanade without the infliction of meeting at every step over-dressed London ladies or patronising dandies, who always seem to me out of place wherever nature is predominant over art, as it is in the country.

I put up at the Trevennis hotel-the best and most comfortable in the town. The landlord had been butler to Sir John Trevennis (a local baronet of great wealth and ancient lineage who was then admiral of the fleet in the Mediterranean), and was a communicative and, in his own opinion, a most distinguished personage. He set up for a