Specifically the great evil of our days, is the abiding temptation, in every direction, to popular discontent, to agitation, and to systematic sedition. Now, we say it with sorrow, that from no other incendiaries have we heard sentiments so wild, fierce, or maliciously democratic, as from the leaders of the Secession. It was the Reform Bill of 1832, and the accompanying agitation, which first suggested the veto agitation of 1834, and prescribed its tone. From all classes of our population in turn, there have come forward individuals to disgrace themselves by volunteering their aid to the chief conspirators of the age. We have earls, we have marquesses, coming forward as Corn-League agents; we have magistrates by scores angling for popularity as Repealers. But these have been private parties, insulated, disconnected, disowned. When we hear of Christianity prostituted to the service of Jacobinism—of divinity becoming the handmaid to insurrection—and of clergymen in masses offering themselves as promoters of anarchy, we go back in thought to that ominous organization of irreligion, which gave its most fearful aspects to the French Revolution.

Other evils are in the rear as likely to arise out of the funds provided for the new Seceders, were the distribution of those funds confessedly unobjectionable, but more immediately under the present murmurs against that distribution. There are two funds: one subscribed expressly for the building of churches, the other limited to the "sustentation" of incumbents. And the complaint is—that this latter fund has been invaded for purposes connected with the first. The reader can easily see the motive to this injustice: it is a motive of ambition. Far more display of power is made by the annunciation to the world of six hundred churches built, than of any difference this way or that in the comfort and decorous condition of the clergy. This last is a domestic feature of the case, not fitted for public effect. But the number of the churches will resound through Europe. Meantime, at present, the allowance to the great body of Seceding clergy averages but L80 a-year; and the allegation is—that, but for the improper interference with the fund on the motive stated, it would have averaged L150 a-year. If any where a town parish has raised a much larger provision for its pastor, even that has now become a part of the general grievance. For it is said that all such special contributions ought to have been thrown into one general fund—liable to one general principle of distribution. Yet again, will even this fund, partially as it seems to have been divided, continue to be available? Much of it lies in annual subscriptions: now, in the next generation of subscribers, a son will possibly not adopt the views of his father; but assuredly he will not adopt his father's zeal. Here however, (though this is not probable,) there may arise some compensatory cases of subscribers altogether new. But another question is pressing for decision, which menaces a frightful shock to the schismatical church: female agency has been hitherto all potent in promoting the subscriptions; and a demand has been made in consequence—that women shall be allowed to vote in the church courts. Grant this demand—for it cannot be evaded—and what becomes of the model for church government as handed down from John Knox and Calvin? Refuse it, and what becomes of the future subscriptions?

But these are evils, it may be said, only for the Seceders. Not so: we are all interested in the respectability of the national teachers, whatever be their denomination: we are all interested in the maintenance of a high standard for theological education. These objects are likely to suffer at any rate. But it is even a worse result which we may count on from the changes, that a practical approximation is thus already made to what is technically known as Voluntaryism. The "United Secession," that is the old collective body of Scottish Dissenters, who, having no regular provision, are carried into this voluntary system, already exult that this consummation of the case cannot be far off. Indeed, so far as the Seceders are dependent upon annual subscriptions, and coupling that relation to the public with the great doctrine of these Seceders, that congregations are universally to appoint their own pastors, we do not see how such an issue is open to evasion. The leaders of the new Secession all protest against Voluntaryism: but to that complexion of things they travel rapidly by the mere mechanic action of their dependent (or semi-dependent) situation, combined with one of their two characteristic principles.

The same United Secession journal openly anticipates another and more diffusive result from this great movement; viz. the general disruption of church establishments. We trust that this anticipation will be signally defeated. And yet there is one view of the case which saddens us when we turn our eyes in that direction. Among the reasonings and expostulations of the Schismatic church, one that struck us as the most eminently hypocritical, and ludicrously so, was this: "You ought," said they, when addressing the Government, and exposing the error of the law proceedings, "to have stripped us of the temporalities arising from the church, stipend, glebe, parsonage, but not of the spiritual functions. We had no right to the emoluments of our stations, when the law courts had decided against us but we had a right to the laborious duties of the stations." No gravity could refuse to smile at this complaint—verbally so much in the spirit of primitive Christianity, yet in its tendency so insidious. For could it be possible that a competitor introduced by the law, and leaving the duties of the pastoral office to the old incumbent, but pocketing the salary, should not be hooted on the public roads by many who might otherwise have taken no part in the feud? This specious claim was a sure and brief way to secure the hatefulness of their successors. Now, we cannot conceal from ourselves that something like this invidious condition of things might be realized under two further revolutions. We have said, that a second schism in the Scottish church is not impossible. It is also but too possible that Puseyism nay yet rend the English establishment by a similar convulsion. But in such contingencies, we should see a very large proportion of the spiritual teachers in both nations actually parading to the public eye, and rehearsing something very like the treacherous proposal of the late Seceders, viz. the spectacle of one party performing much of the difficult duties, and another party enjoying the main emoluments. This would be a most unfair mode of recommending Voluntaryism. Falling in with the infirmities of many in these days, such a spectacle would give probably a fatal bias to that system in our popular and Parliamentary counsels. This would move the sorrow of the Seceders themselves: for they have protested against the theory of all Voluntaries with a vehemence which that party even complain of as excessive. Their leaders have many times avowed, that any system which should leave to men in general the estimate of their own religious wants as a pecuniary interest, would be fatal to the Christian tone of our national morals. Checked and overawed by the example of an establishment, the Voluntaries themselves are far more fervent in their Christian exertions than they could be when liberated from that contrast. The religious spirit of both England and Scotland under such a change would droop for generations. And in that one evil, let us hope, the remotest and least probable of the many evils threatened by the late schism, these nations would have reason by comparison almost to forget the rest.

* * * * *



SITTING FOR A PORTRAIT

What could induce you, my dear Eusebius, to commit yourself into the hands of a portrait-painter? And so, you ask me to go with you. Are you afraid, that you want me to keep you in countenance, where I shall be sure to put you out? You ask too petitioningly, as if you suspected I should refuse to attend your execution; for you are going to be be-headed, and soon will it be circulated through your village, that you have had your head taken off: I will not go with you—it would spoil all. You are afraid to trust the painter. You think he may be a physiognomist, and will hit some characteristic which you would quietly let slip his notice; and you flatter yourself that I might help to mislead him. Are you afraid of being made too amiable, or too plain? No, no! You are not vain. Whence comes this vagary?—well, we shall all know in good time. Were I to be with you, I should talk—perhaps maliciously—on purpose to see how your features would unsettle and shift themselves to the vagrant humour, that though one would know another from habit, and their old acquaintanceship, the painter would never be able to keep them steadily together. I should laugh to see every lineament "going ahead," and art "non compos."

I will, however, venture to put down some plain directions how you are to sit. First, let me tell you how you are not to sit. Don't, in your horror of a sentimental amiable look, put on yourself the air of a Diogenes, or you will be like nothing human—and if you shun Diogenes, you may put on the likeness of a still greater fool. No man living can look more wise than you; but if you fall out with wisdom, or would in your whim throw contempt on it, no one can better play the fool. You are the laughing or crying Philosopher at pleasure—but sit as neither, for in either character you will set the painter's house in a roar. I fear the very plaster figures in it will set you off—to see yourself in such motley company, with Bacchus and Hercules, and Jupiter and Saturn, with his marble children to devour. You will look Homer and Socrates in the face; and I know will make antics, throw out, and show fight to the Gladiator. This may be, if your painter, as many of them do, affect the antique; but if he be another sort of guess person, it may be worse still with you. You may not have to make your bow to a Venus Anadyomene—but how will you be able to face the whole Muggletonian synod? Imagine the "Complete Body," from the Evangelical Magazine, framed and glazed, round the walls, and all looking at you in the condemned cell. Against this you must prepare; for many country artists prefer this line to the antique. It is their connexion—and should you make a mistake and go to the wrong man, you will most assuredly be added to the Convocation, if not put to head a controversy as frontispiece. It will be in vain for you to say, "Fronti nulla fides;" "[Greek: gnothi seauton]" before you get there, or nobody will know you. Take care lest your physiognomy be canvassed by many more besides the painter. Are you prepared to have your every lineament scrutinized by every body? to hear behind a screen the disparagement of your lips, your eyes thought deceitful, and, in addition, a sentence of general ugliness passed upon you? So you must stoop to paint-pots, have daubs of reds, and yellows, and greys perked up against your nose for comparison. Your man may be a fancy mesmerizer, or mesmerize you, now that it is flying about like an epidemic, without knowing it. If he can, he will surely do it, to keep you still: that is the way to get a good sitter. Eusebius in a coma! answering all comers, like one of the heads in the play of Macbeth! But I was to tell you how to sit—that is the way, get into a coma—that will be the painter's best chance of having you; or, when he has been working for hours, he may find you a Proteus, and that you have slipped through his fingers after all his toil to catch you. I will tell you what happened to a painter of my acquaintance. A dentist sat to him two days—the third the painter worked away very hard—looked at the picture, then at his sitter. "Why, sir," said he; "I find I have been all wrong—what can it be? Why, sir, your mouth is not at all like what it was yesterday." "Ah! ah! I will tell you vat it ees," replied the French dentist; "ah! good—my mouse is not de same—no indeed—yesterday I did have my jaw in, but I did lend it out to a lady this day." Don't you think of this now while you are sitting. You know the trick Garrick played the painter, who, foiled in his attempt, started up, and said—"You must be Garrick or the d——!" Then as to attitude, 'tis ten to one but you will be put into one which will be quite uncomfortable to you. One, perhaps, after a pattern. I should advise you to resist this—and sit easy—if you can. Don't put your hand in your waistcoat, and one arm akimbo, like a Captain Macheath, however he may entreat you; and don't be made looking up, like a martyr, which some wonderfully affect; and don't be made turn your head round, as if it was in disgust with the body; and don't let your stomach be more conspicuous than the head, like a cucumber running to seed. Don't let him put your arm up, as in command, or accompanied with a rapt look as if you were listening to the music of the spheres; don't thrust out your foot conspicuously, as if you meant to advertise the blacking. Some artists are given to fancy attitudes such as best set off the coats, they are but nature's journeymen at the faces; don't fancy that the cut, colour, or cloth of your coat will exempt you from the penalty of their practice. Why, Eusebius, they have lay-figures, and dress them just as you see them at the tailor's or perfumer's; and one of these things will be put up for you—a mannikin for Eusebius! In such hands the coat is by far the best piece of work, you may be sure your own won't be taken for a pattern. You will despise it when you see it, and it will be one you can never change—it will defy vamping. You may be at any time new varnished whenever after generations shall wish to see how like a dancing-master the old gentleman must have looked. It is enough to make you a dancing bear now to think of it. Others, again, equip you with fur and make you look as if you were in the Hudson's Bay Company. Luckily for you, flowered dressing-gowns are out, or you might have been represented a Mantelini. What can you be doing! It is difficult to put you in your positions. There are some that will turn you about and about a half an hour or more before they begin, as they would a horse at the fair—ay, and look in your mouth too. If they cannot get you otherwise into an attitude, they will shampoo you into one. And, remember, all this they will do, because they have not the skill to paint any one sitting quite easy. Don't have a roll in your hand—that always signifies a member of Parliament. Don't have your finger on a book—that would be a pedantry you could not endure. I cannot imagine what you will do with your hands. Ten to one, however, but the painter leaves then out or copies them out of some print when you are gone. This will be picking and stealing that you will have no hand in. What to do with any one's hands is a most difficult thing to say—too many do not know what to do with them themselves; and, under the suffering of sitting, I think you will be one of them. If there is a child in the room, you will be making rabbits with your fingers. Then you are at the mercy of the painter's privilege—the foreground and background. If you have the common fate, your head will be stuck upon a red curtain, a watered pattern. If your man has used up his carmine, you will be standing in a fine colonnade, waiting with the utmost patience for the burst of a thunder cloud that makes the marble column stand out conspicuously, and there will be a distant park scene; and thus you will represent the landed interest: or you will perhaps have your glove in your hand—a device adopted by some, to intimate that they are hand and glove with all the neighbouring gentry. And it is a common thing to have a new hat and a walking-cane upon a marble table. This shows the sitter has the use of his legs, which otherwise might be doubted, and is therefore judicious. If you are supposed to be in the open air, you will not know at first sight that you are so represented, until you have learned the painter's hieroglyphic for trees. You will find them to be angular sorts of sticks, with red and yellow flag-rags flapping about; and ten to one but you have a murky sky, and no hat on your head; but as to such a country as you ever walked in, or ever saw, don't expect to see such a one as a background to your picture, and you will readily console yourself that you are turning your back upon it. If you are painted in a library, books are cheap—so that the artist can afford to throw you in a silver inkstand into the bargain, and a pen—such a pen! the goose wouldn't know it that bred it—and perhaps an open letter to answer, with your name on the cover. If you are made answering the letter, that will never be like you—perhaps it would be more like if the letter should be unopened. Now, do not flatter yourself; Eusebius, that all these things are matters of choice with you. "Non omnia possumus omnes," is the regular rule of the profession; some stick to the curtain all their lives, from sheer inability to set it—to draw it aside. You remember the sign-painter that went about painting red lions, and his reply to a refractory landlord who insisted upon a white lamb. "You may have a white lamb if you please, but when all is said and done, it will be a great deal more like a red lion." And I am sorry to say, the faces too, are not unfrequently in this predicament, for they have a wonderful family likeness, and these run much by counties. A painter has often been known totally to fail, by quitting his beat. There is certainly an advantage in this; for if any gentleman should be so unfortunate as to have no ancestors, he may pick up at random, in any given county in England, a number that will very well match, and all look like blood-relations. There is an instance where this resemblance was greatly improved, by the advice of an itinerant of the profession, who, at a very moderate price, put wigs on all the Vandyks. And there you see some danger, Eusebius, that—be represented how you may—you are not sure of keeping your condition ten years; you may have, by that time, a hussar cap put upon your unconscious head. But portraits fare far worse than that.

I remember, when a boy, walking with an elderly gentleman, and passing a broker's stall, there was the portrait of a fine florid gentleman in regimentals; he stopped to look at it—he might have bought it for a few shillings. After we had gone away,—"that," said he, "is the portrait of my wife's great uncle—member for the county, and colonel of militia: you see how he is degraded to these steps." "Why do you not rescue him?" said I. "Because he left me nothing," was the reply. A relative of mine, an old lady, hit upon a happy device; the example is worth following. Her husband was the last of his race, for she had no children. She took all the family portraits out of their frames, rolled up all the pictures, and put them in the coffin with the deceased. No one was more honourably accompanied to the grave—and so he slept with his fathers. It has not, to be sure, Eusebius, much to do with your portrait, but thinking of these family portraits, one is led on to think of their persons, &c.; so I must tell you what struck me as a singular instance of the 'sic nos non nobis.' I went with a cousin, upon a sort of pilgrimage at some distance, to visit some family monuments. There was one large handsome marble one in the chancel. You will never guess how it had been treated. A vicar's wife had died, and the disconsolate widower had caused a square marble tablet, with the inscription of his wife's virtues, to be actually inserted in the Very centre of our family monument: and yet you, by sitting for your portrait, hope to be handed down unmutilated to generations to come,—yes, they will come, and you will be a mark for the boys to shoot peas at—that is, if you remain at all in the family—you may be transferred to the wench's garret, or the public-house, and have a pipe popped through the canvass into your mouth, to make you look ridiculous. I really think you have a chance of being purchased, to be hung up in the club parlour as pictorial president of the Odd-Fellows. Why should you be exempt from what kings are subject to? The "king's head" is a sign in many a highway, to countenance ill-living. You too, will be bought at a broker's—have your name changed without your consent—and be adopted into a family whereof you would heartily despise the whole kith and kin. If pride has not a fall in the portraits of the great and noble, where shall we find it?"

A painter once told me, that he assisted one of the meanest of low rich men, to collect some family portraits; he recommended to him a fine Velasquez. "Velasquez!—who's he?" said the head of his family. "It is a superb picture, sir—a genuine portrait by the Spaniard, and doubtless, of some Spanish nobleman. "Then," said he, "I won't have it; I'll have no Spanish blood contaminate my family, sir." "Spanish blood," rejected by the plebeian! I have known better men than you, Eusebius—excuse the comparison—vamped up and engraved upon the spur of the moment, for celebrated highwaymen or bloody murderers. But this digression won't help you out in your sitting. Let me see what the learned say upon the subject—what advice shall we get from the man of academies. Here we have him, Gerrard Larresse; you may be sure that he treats of portrait-painting, and with importance enough too. Here it is—"Of Portraiture." But that is far too plan. We must have an emblem:—

"Emblem touching the handling of portraits."

"Nature with her many breasts, is in a sitting posture. Near her stands a little child, lifting her garment off her shoulders. On the other side stands Truth, holding a mirror before her, wherein she views herself down to the middle, and is seemingly surprised at it. On the frame of this glass, are seen a gilt pallet and pencils. Truth has a book and palm branch in her hand." What do you think of that, Eusebius, for a position? But why Nature or Truth should be surprised at viewing herself down to the middle, I cannot imagine. It evidently won't do to surprise you in that manner. Poor Gerrard, I see, thinks it a great condescension in him to speak of portrait-painting at all; he calls it, "departing from the essence of art, and subjecting (the painter) to all the defects of nature." Hear that, Eusebius! you are to sit to be a specimen of the defects of nature. He is indignant that "such great masters as Vandyke, Lely, Van Loo, the old and young Bakker, and others," possessed of great talents, postponed what is noble and beautiful to what is more ordinary. There you are again, Eusebius, with your ordinary visage, unworthy such men as the old and young Bakker, whoever they were. But since there must be portraits, he could endure the method of the ancients, who, "used to cause those from whom the commonwealth had received extraordinary benefits, either in war or civil affairs, or for eminence in religion, to be represented in marble or metal, or in a picture, that the sight of them, by those honours, might be a spur to posterity to emulate the same virtues. This honour was first begun with their deities; afterwards it was paid to heroes, and of consequence to philosophers, orators, religious men, and others, not only to perpetuate their virtues, but also to embalm their names and memories. But now it goes further; a person of any condition whatsoever, have he but as much money as the painter asks, must sit for his picture. This is a great abuse, and sprung from as laudable a cause."

Are you not ashamed to sit after that? He is not, however, without his indulgences. He will allow something to a lover and a husband.

"Has a citizen's wife but an only babe? he is drawn at half a year old; at ten years old he sits again; and for the last time in his twenty-fifth year, in order to show her tender folly: and then she stands wondering how a man can so alter in that time. Is not this a weighty reason? a reprovable custom, if painters did not gain by it. But again, portraits are allowable, when a lover is absent from his mistress, that they may send each other their pictures, to cherish and increase their loves; a man and wife parted so may do the same." You undertake, you perceive, a matter of some responsibility—you must account to your conscience for the act of sitting for your picture. Then there is a chapter upon defects, which, as I suppose he presumes people don't know themselves, he catalogues pretty fully, till you are quite out of humour with poor human nature. The defects are "natural ones—accidental ones—usual ones." Natural—"a wry face, squint eyes, wry mouth, nose," &c. Accidental. "Loss of an eye, a cut on the cheek, or other part of the face, pits of the small-pox and the like." Usual. "Contraction of the eyes and mouth, or closing or gaping of the latter, or drawing it in somewhat to this or that side, upwards or downwards," &c. As for other bodily infirmities, how many have wry necks, hunchbacks, bandy legs—withered or short arms, or one shorter than another; dead or lame hands or fingers." Now, are you so sure of the absence of all these defects, that you venture? You must think yourself an Adonis, and not think that you are to be flattered, by having any very considerable number of your defects hid. "The necessary ones ought to be seen, because they help the likeness; such as a wry face, squint eyes, low forehead, thinness, and fatness; a wry neck, too short or too long a nose; wrinkles between the eyes; ruddiness or paleness of the cheeks, or lips; pimples or warts about the mouth; and such like." After this, it is right you should know that "Nature abhors deformity." Nay, that we always endeavour to hide our own—and which do you mean to hide, or do you intend to come out perfect? I daresay you can discover some little habits of your own, Eusebius, free from vanity as you are, that tend to these little concealments! Do you remember how a foolish man lost a considerable sum of money once, by forgetting this human propensity? He had lost some money to little K—— of Bath, the deformed gambler—and being netted at his loss, thought to pique the winner. "I'll wager," said he, "L50, I'll point out the worst leg in company."—"Done," said K—— to his astonishment. "The man does not know himself," thought he, for there sat K—— crouched up all shapes by the fireside. The wagerer, to win his bet, at once cried, "Why, that," pointing to K——'s leg, which was extended towards the grate. "No," said K—— quietly unfolding the other from beneath the chair, and showing it, "that's worse." By which you may learn the fact—that every man puts his best leg foremost. But we must not quit our friend Gerard yet. I like his grave conceit. I rejoice to find him giving the painters a rap over their knuckles. He says, Eusebius, that they are fond of having "smutty pictures" in their rooms; and roundly tells them, that though fine pictures are necessary, there is no need of their having such subjects as "Mars and Venus, and Joseph and Potiphar's Wife." Now, though I do not think our moderns offend much in this respect—the hint is good—and some exhibit studies from models about their rooms, that evidently sat without their stays. Gerard was the man for contrivances—here is a capital one. He does not quite approve of painting a wooden leg; but if it be to be done, see with what skill even that in the hands of a Gerard may be dignified—and the painter absolved, "lege solutus." "But if the hero insist upon the introducing of such a leg, on a supposition that 'tis an honour to have lost a limb in his country's service, the painter must then comply with his desires; or else contrive it lying on a table covered with red velvet." But capital as this is, it is not all. He quite revels in contrivances; "if he desire it after the antique manner, it must be contrived in a bas-relief, wherein the occasion of it may be represented; or it may hang near him on a wall, with its buckles and straps, as is done in hunting equipages; or else it may be placed among the ornaments of architecture, to be more in view." You see he scorns to hide it—has worked up his imagination to conceive all possible ways of showing it; depend upon it he longed to paint a wooden leg, to which the face should be the appendage, the leg the portrait. "Hoc ligno," not "hoc signo vinces." But here Gerard bounces—giving an instance of a gentleman "who, being drawn in little, and comparing the smallness of the eyes with his own, asked the painter whether he had such? However, in complaisance, and for his pleasure, he desired that one eye at least might be as big as his own, the other to remain as it was." Fie, Gerard! you have spoiled your emblem by taking the mirror out of truth's hand.

He is particular about postures and backgrounds. "It will not be improper to treat also about easiness and sedateness in posture, opposed to stir and bustle, and the contrary—namely, that the picture of a gentlewoman of repute, who, in a grave and sedate manner, turns towards that of her husband, hanging near it, gets a great decorum by moving and stirring hind-works, whether by means of waving trees, or crossing architecture of stone and wood, or any thing else that the master thinks will best contrast, or oppose, the sedate posture of his principal figure." Here you see Eusebius, how hind-works tend to keep up a bustle! "And because these are things of consequence, and may not be plainly apprehended by every one," he explains himself by ten figures in one plate—and such figures! As a sitter, he would place you very much above the eye—that is, technically speaking, adopt a low horizon; "because—the because is a because—because it's certain that when we see any painted figure, or object, in a place where the life can be expected, as standing on the ground, leaning over a balcony or balustrade, or out at a window, &c., it deceives the eye, and by being seen unawares, (though expected,) causes sometimes a pleasing mistake; or it frightens and surprises others, when they meet with it unexpectedly, at such places as aforesaid, and where there is any likelihood for it." Your artist will probably put you on an inverted box, and sitting in a great chair, probably covered with red morocco leather, in which you will not be at home, and in any manner comfortable. We see this deal box sometimes converted into a marble step, as a step to a throne, and such it is in one of the pictures of the Queen; but it is so ill coloured, that it looks for all the world like a great cheese; it should be sent to the farmers who made the Queen the cheese present, to show the pride of England walking upon the "fat of the land." He presents us with many methods of showing the different characters of persons to be painted, some of which will be novel to you. For instance, you would not expect directions to represent a secretary of state with the accompaniments of a goose. "With a secretary the statue of Harpocrates, and in tapestry or bas-relief, the story of Alexander shutting Hephaestion's mouth with a seal-ring; also the emblem of fidelity, or a goose with a stone in its bill." Methinks the director, or governor, of the East India Company, must look very small beside his bedizened accessory, meant to represent Company. "She is to be an heroine with a scollop of mother-of-pearl on her head, in the nature of an helmet, and thereon a coral branch; a breast ornament of scales; pearls and corals about her neck; buskins on her legs, with two dolphins conjoined head to head, adorned with sea-shells; two large shells on her shoulders, a trident in her hand, and her clothing a long mantle; a landskip behind her of an Indian prospect, with palm and cocoa trees, some figures of blacks, and elephant's teeth. This figure also suits an admiral, or commander at sea, when a sea-fight is introduced instead of a landskip." Such a figure may, indeed, be more at home at sea, and such a one may have been that famous lady, whose captain so "very much applauded her," and

"Made her the first lieutenant Of the gallant Thunder Bomb."

Not a painter of the present day, it seems, knows how to paint the clergy. Mr Pickersgill has done quite common things, and simply shown the cloth and the band—that is poor device. See how Gerard would have it done. Every clergyman should be a Dr Beattie. "With a divine agrees the statue of truth, represented in a Christian-like manner, or else this same emblem in one of his hands, and his other on his breast, besides tapestries, bas-reliefs, or paintings, and some Christian emblems of the true faith; and representation of the Old and New Testament—in the offskip a temple." All the portraits of the great duke are defective, inasmuch as none of them have "Mars in a niche," or Victory sitting on a trophy, or a statue of Hercules. You probably have no idea what a great personage is a "sea-insurer." He is accompanied by Arion on a dolphin; and in a picture a sea-haven, with a ship under sail making towards it; on the shore the figure of Fortune, and (who are, think you, the "supercargoes?") over the cargo "Castor and Pollux." In this mode of portrait-painting it would be absolutely necessary to go back to the old plan of putting the names underneath the personages; and even then, though you write under such, this is Castor, this Pollux, and this the sea-insurer, it will ever puzzle the whole ship's crew to conjecture how they came there together. Gerard admits we cannot paint what we have not seen, and by example rather condemns his own recommendations. Fewer have seen Castor and Pollux, than have seen a lion, and he says men cannot paint what they have not seen. "As was the case of a certain Westphalian, who, representing Daniel in the lions' den, and having never seen a lion, he painted hogs instead of lions, and wrote underneath, 'These should be lions.'"

By this time, Eusebius, you ought to know how to sit, if you have not made up your mind not to sit at all. You need not, however, be much alarmed about the emblems—modern masters cut all that matter short. They won't throw in any superfluous work, you may be sure of that, unless you should sit to Landseer, and he will paint your dog, and throw in your superfluous self for nothing. You would be like Mercury with the statuary, mortified to find his own image thrown into the bargain.

Besides your own defects, you have to encounter the painter's. His unsteady, uncertain hand, may add an inch to your nose before you are aware of it. It is quite notorious that few painters paint both eyes of the same size; and after your utmost efforts to look straight in his face, he may make you squint for ever, and not see that he has done so. Unless he be himself a sensible man, he will be sure to make you look like a fool. Then, what is like to-day will be unlike to-morrow. His megillups will change, so that in six months you may look like a copper Indian; or the colours may fade, and leave you the ghost of what you were. Again, he may paint you lamentably like, odiously like, yet give you a sinister expression, or at least an unpleasant one. Then, if you remonstrate, he is offended; if you refuse to take it, he writes you word that if not paid for and removed by next Tuesday, he will add a tail to it, and dispose of it to Mr Polito. Did not Hogarth do something of this kind? If he please himself he may not satisfy you, and if you are satisfied, none of your friends are, who take an opportunity of the portrait to say sarcastic things of you. For in that respect you may be most like your picture, or it most like you, for every body will have some fault to find with it. Why, don't you remember but last year some friends poked out the eye from a portrait, even after it had been on the exhibition walls. Then, what with the cleaning and varnishing, you have to go through as many disorders as when you were a child. You will have the picture-cleaner's measles. It was not long ago, I saw a picture in a most extraordinary state; and, on enquiry, I found that the cook of the house had rubbed it over with fat of bacon to make it bear out, and that she had learned it at a great house, where there is a fine collection, which are thus bacon'd twice every year. You are sure not to keep even your present good looks, but will become smoked and dirty. Then must you be cleaned, and there is an even chance that in doing it they put out at least one of your eyes, (I saw both eyes taken out of a Correggio,) and the new one to be put in will never match the other. The ills that flesh is heir to, are nothing to the ills its representative is heir to. At best, the very change of fashion in dress will make you look quizzical in a few years. For you are going to sit when dress is most unbecoming, and it is only by custom that the eye is reconciled to it, so that all the painted present generation must look ridiculous in the eyes of posterity. Don't have your name put on the canvass; then you may console yourself that, in all these mortal chances and changes, whatever happens to it, you will not be known. I have one before me now with the name and all particulars in large gilt letters. Happily this ostentation is out; you may therefore hope, when the evil day comes, fallere, to escape notice. I hope the painter will give you that bold audacious look which may stare the beholder in the face, and deny your own identity; no small advantage, for doubtless the "[Greek: semata lugra]" of Bellerophon was but his portrait, which, by a hang-look expression, intimatd death. Your painter may be ignorant of phrenology, and, without knowing it, may give you some detestable bumps; and your picture may be borrowed to lecture upon, at inns and institutions, and anecdotes rummaged up or forged, to match the painter's doing—the bumps he has given you.

You must not, however, on this account, think too ill of the poor painter. He is subject to human infirmities—so are you—and his hand and eye are not always in tune. He has, too, to deal with all sorts of people—many difficult enough to please. You know the fable of the painter who would please everybody, and pleased nobody. You sitters are a whimsical set, and most provokingly shift your features and position, and always expect miracles, at a moment, too; you are here to-day, and must be off to-morrow. It is nothing, to you that paint won't dry for you, so even that must be forced, and you are rather varnished in than painted, and no wonder if your faces go to pieces, and you become mealy almost as soon as you have had the life's blood in you, and that with the best carmine. And often you take upon yourselves to tell the painter what to do, as if you knew yourselves better than he, though he has been staring at nothing but you for an hour or two at a time, perhaps. You ask him, too, perpetually what feature he is now doing, that you may call up a look. You screw up your mouths, and try to put all the shine you can into your eyes, till, from continual effort, they look like those of a shotten herring; and yet you expect all to be like what you are in your ordinary way. After he has begun to paint your hair, you throw it about with your hands in all directions but the right, and all his work is to begin over again. You have no notion how ignorant of yourselves you are. I happened to call, some time since, upon a painter with whom I am on intimate terms. I found him in a roar of laughter, and quite alone. "What is the matter?" said I. "Matter!" replied he; "why, here has Mr B. been sitting to me these four days following, and at last, about half an hour ago, he, sitting in that chair, puts up his hand to me, thus, with 'Stop a moment, Mr Painter; I don't know whether you have noticed it or not, but it is right that I should tell you that I have a slight cast in my eye.' You know Mr B., a worthy good man, but he has the very worst gimlet eye I ever beheld." Yes, and only slightly knew it, Eusebius. And I have to say, he thought his defect wondrously exaggerated, when, for the first time, he saw it on canvas; and perhaps all his family noticed it there, whom custom had reconciled into but little observation of it, and the painter was considered no friend of the family. For the poor artist is expected to please all down to the youngest child, and perhaps that one most, for she often rules the rest. And people do not too much consider the feelings of painters. I knew an artist, a great humorist, who spent much time at the court at Lisbon. He had to paint a child, I believe the Prince of the Brazils. I remember, as if I saw him act the scene but yesterday, and it is many years ago. Well, the maid of honour, or whatever was her title, brought the child into the room, and remained some time, but at length left him alone with the painter. When he found himself only in this company, his pride took the alarm. He put on great airs, frowned, pouted, looked disdainful, superbly swelling, and got off the chair, retreating slowly, scornfully. The artist, who was a great mimic, imitated his every gesture, and, with some extravagance, frowned as he frowned, swelled as he swelled, blew out his breath as the child did, advanced as he retreated, till the child at length found himself pinned in the corner, at which the artist put on such a ridiculous expression, that risible nature could stand it no longer; pride was conquered by humour, and from that hour they were on the most familiar terms. It was not an ill-done thing of our Henry VIII. when he made one of his noble courtiers apologize to Holbein for some slight, bidding him, at the same time, to know that he could make a hundred such as he, but it was past his power to make a Holbein. And you know how a great monarch picked up Titian's pencil which had fallen. How greatly did Alexander honour Apelles, in that he would suffer none else to paint his portrait. And when the painter, by drawing his Campaspe, fell in love with her, he presented her to him. It is a bad policy, Eusebius, to put slights upon these men—and it is more, it is ungenerous; they may revenge themselves upon you whenever they please, and give you a black eye too, that will never get right again. They can in effigy, put every limb out of joint; and you being no anatomist, may only see that you look ill, and know not where you went wrong. All you sitters expect to be flattered, and very little flattery do you bestow. Perversely, you won't even see your own likenesses. Take, for instance, the following scene, which I had from a miniature painter:—A man upwards of forty years of age, had been sitting to him—one of as little pretensions as you can well imagine; you would have thought it impossible that he could have had an homoeopathic proportion of vanity—of personal vanity at least; but it turned out otherwise. He was described as a greasy bilious man, with a peculiarly conventicle aspect—that is, one that affects a union of gravity and love. "Well, sir," said the painter, "that will do—I think I have been very fortunate in your likeness." The man looks at it, and says nothing, puts on an expression of disappointment. "What! don't you think it like, sir?" says the artist. "Why—ye-ee-s, it is li-i-ke—but——" "But what sir?—I think it exactly like. I wish you would tell me where it is not like?" "Why, I'd rather you should find it out yourself. Have the goodness to look at me."—And here my friend the painter declared, that he put on a most detestably affected grin of amiability.—"Well, sir, upon my word, I don't see any fault at all; it seems to me as like as it can be; I wish you'd be so good as to tell me what you mean." "Oh, sir, I'd rather not—I'd rather you should find it out yourself—look again." "I can't see any difference, sir; so if you don't tell me, it can't be altered." "Well then, with reluctance, if I must tell you, I don't think you have given my sweet expression about the eyes." Oh, Eusebius, Eusebius, what a mock you would have made of that man; you would have flouted his vanity about his ears for him gloriously; I would have given a crown to have had him sit to you, and you should have let me be by, to attend your colours. How we would have bedaubed the fellow before he had left the room, with his sweet eyes! But there, your patient painter must endure all that, and not give a hint that he disagrees in the opinion: or if he speak his mind on the occasion, he may as well quit the town, for under the influence of those sweet eyes, nor man, woman, nor child, will come to sit to him. And consider, Eusebius, their misery in having such sitters at all. They are not Apollos, and Venuses, nor Adonises, that knock at painters' doors. Not one in a hundred has even a tolerably pleasant face. I certainly once knew a rough-dealing artist, who told a gentleman very plainly—"Sir, I do not paint remarkably ugly people." But he came to no good. Not but that a clever fellow might do something of this kind with management, with good effect; get the reputation of being a painter of "beauties," with a little skill, make beauties of every body, and stoutly maintain that he never will have any others sit to him. I am not quite certain, that something of this kind has been practised, or I do not think I should have the art to invent it. All those who sit during a courtship, to present their portraits as lovers, I look upon it come as professed cheats, and mean to be most egregiously flattered; and if the thing succeeds through the painter's skill, within six months after the marriage, he, the painter, is called the cheat, and the portrait not in the least like. So easy is it to get out of repute, by doing your best to please them with a little flattery. You will never get into a book of beauty, Eusebius. Hitherto, the list runs in the female line. The male will soon come in, depend upon it.

Have a little pity upon the poor artist, who would, but cannot, flatter—who is conscious of his inability to put in those blandishments that shall give a grace to ugliness—from whose hand unmitigated ugliness becomes uglier—who, at length, driven from towns, where people begin to see this, as a dauber, takes refuge among the farm houses; at first paints the farmers and their wives, their ugly faces stretching to the very edge of the frames, and is at last reduced to paint the favourite cow, or the fat ox—the prodigal (alas! no; the simply miserable, in mistaking his profession) feeding the swine, and with them, and they not over-proud of his doings. Then there is another poor, self-deluded character among the tribe. I have the man in my eye at this moment. It is not long since I paid him a visit to see a great historical composition, which I had been requested to look at. It was the most miserable of all miserable daubs; yet so conspicuously set off with colours and hardness, that the eye could not escape it. It was a most determined eye-sore. The quiet, the modest demeanour of the young man at first deceived me; I ventured to find some trifling fault. The artist was up—still his manner was quiet—somewhat, in truth, contemptuously so; but, as for modesty, I doubt not he was modest in every other matter relating to himself; but, in art, he as calmly talked of himself, Michael Angelo, and Raffaelle, as a trio—that two had obtained immortality of fame, and that he sought the same, and, he trusted, by the same means, and believed with similar powers: as calmly did he speak in this manner, as if it were a thing long settled in his own mind and in fate—and in the manner of an indulgent communication. He lamented the lack of taste and knowledge in the world; that so little was real art appreciated, that he was obliged to submit to the drudgery of portrait. Submit!—and such portraits. Poor fellow! how long will he get sitters to submit? I have recently heard the fate of one of his great compositions. He had persuaded the vicar and church-wardens of a parish to accept a picture. He attended the putting it up. It was a fine old church. With the quietest conceit, he had a fine east window blocked up to receive the picture—had the tables of Commandments mutilated, and thrust up in a corner—damaged the wall to give effect to the picture—and really believed that he was conferring an honour and benefit upon the parishioners and the county. Soon, however, men of better taste and sense began to cry out. The incumbent died. His successor related to me the shocking occurrence of the picture. He had it removed, and the damage done to the edifice repaired. And what became of the grand historical? The church-warden alone, who, in the pride of his heart and ignorance, had paid the poor artist for the colours, gladly took the picture. His account of it was, that it was so powerful in his small room, as to affect several ladies to tears—and that he had covered it with a thin gauze, to keep down the fierceness of the sentiment; for it was too affecting. Now, here is a man, who, if you should happen to sit to him, will think it the greatest condescension to take your picture, and will paint you such as you never would wish to be seen or known. There is a predilection now for schools of design; and the world will teem with these poor creatures.

Many there are, however, who, having considerable ability, have much to struggle against—who love the profession of art, and with that unaccountable giving themselves up to it, are quite unfit for any other occupation in life, yet, from adverse circumstances—ill health, strange temperaments—do not succeed. Many years ago, I knew a very interesting young man, and a very industrious one, too, of very considerable ability as a painter, but not, at that time, of portraits. While hard at work, getting just enough to live by, he was seized with an illness that threatened rapid consumption. The kind physician who gratuitously visited him, told him one day—"You cannot live here. I do not say that you have a year of safety in this climate, or a month of safety, but you have not weeks. You must instantly go to a warmer climate." Ill, and without means, beyond the few pounds he could gather from his hasty breaking-up, he had courage to look on the cheerful side of things, and went off in the first vessel to the West Indies. I saw him afterwards. He gave me a history of his adventures. He went from island to island—became portrait-painter—a painter of scenes—of any thing that might offer; by good conduct, urbanity, gentleness, and industry, was respected, liked, and patronized; lived, and sent home a thousand pounds or two—came to England to see his friends for a few months. I saw him on his way to them. He was then in health and spirits—told me the many events of the few years—and in six weeks the climate killed him. But the anecdote of his turning portrait-painter is what I have to tell. On the passage, they touched at one of the islands, and he found but very little money in his pocket; and, while others went off to hotels, or estates of friends, he went his way quietly to seek out cheap lodgings. He found such, which the good woman told him he could have in three hours. He afterwards learned that she waited that time for the then tenant to die in the bed which he was to occupy. Walking away to pass the time, he met some of his fellow passengers, who asked him if he had been to see the governor. He had not. They told him it was necessary he should go. So thither he went. Now, the governor asked him, "What brought him out to the West Indies?" He replied, that he came as an artist. "An artist!" said the governor. "That is a novelty indeed. Have you any specimens? I should like to see them." Now, among his things, he had a miniature of himself, painted by a man who attained eminence in the profession, and whom I knew well. Here, with an ingenuousness characteristic of the man, he acknowledged to me how, starvation staring him in the face, he stared in the governor's; and the governor being rather a hard-featured man, whose likeness, though he had never taken a portrait, he thought he could hit; when the governor admired the miniature, and asked him, "If it was his?" he did not resist the temptation, and said, "Yes." Upon which the governor sat to him. Then others sat to him; and so he left the island, with a replenished purse, and from that time became a portrait-painter. If the poor fellow had been the veriest dauber, you, Eusebius, would have sat to him twenty times over, and have told all the country round quite as great a fib as he did the governor, that he was a very Raffaelle in outline, and Titian in coloring. And what shall the "recording angel" do? Poor fellow! he had no conceit.

But you, Eusebius, need not trust or give your countenance, in the way of the art to any man because you like his history or his manners. A thing you are very likely to do in spite of this advice, though you multiply portraits for "Saracen's Heads."

Foolish artists themselves, who affect to talk of the great style, and set themselves up as geniuses, speak slightingly of portrait-painting, as degrading—as pandering to vanity, &c. I verily believe, that half this common cant arose from jealousy of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Degradation indeed!—as if Raffaelle and Titian, and Vandyk and Reynolds, degraded the art, or were degraded by their practice; and as to pandering to vanity—view it in another light, and it is feeding affection.

I knew a painter, who honourably refused to paint a lady's picture, when he waited upon her on purpose, sent by some injudicious friends to take her portrait in her last days. She had been a woman of great celebrity—she received the painter—but, with a weakness, pointed first to one side of the room where were portraits of earls and bishops, saying, "these are or were all my particular friends"—and then to the other side of the room, to a well filled library—"and these are all my works." "Now," said the painter to me, "I did not think it fair to her reputation to take her portrait—and she had had many taken at better times." Here was one who would not pander to vanity. After all, it is astonishing how few flattering painters there have been. Even he who made Venus, Minerva, and Juno, starting with astonishment at the presence of Queen Elizabeth, certainly made her by far the ugliest of the quartette. You may see the picture at Hampton Court. She must have been difficult to please, for she insisted upon being painted without shadow. "Glorious Gloriana" was to be the sun of female beauty. She is quite as well as some in "The Book." For modern "beauty" manufacturers make beauty to consist in silliness or sentimentality.

Do you believe in the story of the origin of portrait—the Grecian maid and her lover? I cannot—for I have often tried my hand, and such frights were the result, that it would have been a cure for love.

For lack of the art of portrait-painting, we have really no idea what mankind were like before the time of our Eighth Harry. What we see could not possibly be likenesses, because they are not humanity. But in Holbein's heads, such as the royal collection, published by Chamberlaine, we begin to see what men and women were. What our early Henrys and Edwards were: what the court or the people were, we cannot know; they are buried in the night of art, like the brave who lived before the time of Agamemnon. Perhaps it is quite as well—"omne ignotum pro mirifico"—and who would lose the pleasure of wonder and conjecture, with all its imaginary phantasmagoria? We might have a mesmeric coma that might put us in possession of the past, if it can of the future—and gratify curiosity wofully at the expense of what is more valuable than that kind of truth. A mesmeric painter may take the portrait of Helen of Troy, and you may knock at your twenty neighbours' doors, and find perhaps a greater beauty, especially if chronology be trusted as to her age at the Trojan war. Would you like to see a veritable portrait of Angelica—or of your Orlando in his madness?

The great portrait-painter—the sun, in his diurnal course all over the world, may be, for aught we know, photographing mankind, and registering us, too; and, if we are to judge from the specimens we do see, the collection cannot be very flattering. Who dares call the sun a flatterer?

"... Solem quis dicere falsum Audeat?"

At the very moment that you are sitting to your man, to be set off with smirk and smile and the graces of art, you are perhaps making a most formidable impression elsewhere. You would not like to

"Look upon this picture, and on this."

Some poor country people have an unaccountable dislike to having their portraits taken. Savages think them second selves, and that may be bewitched and punished; possibly something of this feeling may be at the bottom of the dislike. I was once sketching in a country village, and an old woman went by, and I put her into the picture. Some, looking over me, called out to her that her likeness was taken. She cried, because she had not her best cap and gown on. I was once positively driven from a cottage door, because a woman thought I was "taking her off." I know not but that it was a commendable wish in the old woman to appear decent before the world, and so might have been the fine lady's wish—

"Betty, put on a little red, One surely need not look a fright when dead."

We choose to be satirical, and call it vanity; but put both anecdotes into tolerably good grave Latin, and name them Portia and Lucretia, and we should have as fine a sentiment as the boasted one of the hero endeavouring to fall decently. There may be but little difference, and that only just what we, in our humours, choose to make it. I am sure you, Eusebius, will stand up for the old village crone, and the fine lady, too. But the fraternity of the brush, if they do now and then promote vanity, much more commonly gratify affection. Private portraits seem to me to be things so sacred, that they ought not to survive the immediate family or friends for whose gratification they are painted. I much like the idea of burying them at last. I will show you how estimable these things sometimes are. You remember a portrait I have—a gentleman in a dress of blue and gold—in crayon. Did I ever tell you the anecdote respecting him? If not, you shall have it, as I had from my father. If you recollect the picture, you must recollect that it is of a very handsome man. His horses took fright, the carriage was overturned, and he was killed upon the spot. The property came to my father. One day an unknown lady, in a handsome equipage, stopped at his door, and, in an interview with him, requested a portrait of this very person, not the one you have seen, but another in oil-colour, and of that the head only. My father cut it out, and gave it to her. Many, many years afterwards it was returned to him by an unknown hand, with an account of the accident that caused the death, pasted on the back; and it is now in my possession. The lady was never known. No, Eusebius, we must not deny portrait-painters, nor portrait painting. It is the line in which we excel—and that we have above all others patronized, and had great men too arise from our encouragement—Who are so rich in Vandyks as we are? And some we have had better than the world allowed them to be—Sir Peter Lely was occasionally an admirable painter—though Sir Joshua did say, "We must go beyond him now." There was Sir Joshua himself, and Gainsborough—would that either were alive to take you, Eusebius, though I were to pay for the sitting. I think too, that I should have given the preference to Gainsborough—it would have been so true. Did you ever see his portrait of Foote?—so unaffected—it must be like. I won't be invidious by naming any, where we have so many able portrait-painters—but if you have not fixed upon your man, come to me, and I will tell half-a-dozen, and we will go to them, and you shall judge for yourself—and if you like miniature, there are those who will make what is small great. What wonderful power Cooper had in this way. I recently had in my hands a wondrous and marvellous portrait of Andrew Marvell by him. The sturdy honest Andrew. This man Cooper, had such wonderful largeness of style, of execution too, even in his highest finished small oil pictures—such as in this of Andrew Marvell. We had an age, certainly, of very bad taste, and it was not extinct in the days of Sir Joshua and Gainsborough; nay, sometimes under both of these, I am sorry to say, it was even made worse. The age of shepherds and shepherdesses—in the case of Gainsborough, brought down to downright rustics. This, of making the sitters affect to be what they were not, was bad enough—and it was any thing but poetical. But it was infinitely worse in the itinerants of the day—and is very well ridiculed by Goldsmith, who lived much among painters, in his Vicar of Wakefield and family sitting for the family picture. We have happily quite got out of that folly. But we are getting into one of most unpoetical pageantry—portrait likenesses. We have not seen yet a good portrait of Wellington, and the Queen, or the Prince; and if they must send their portraits to foreign courts, let them be advised to learn, if they know not yet how, and we are told they do, to paint them themselves. Montaigne tells us, that he was present one day at Bar-le-duc, when King Francis the Second, for a memorial of Rene, King of Sicily, was presented with a picture the king had drawn of himself. Some how or other, kings and queens are apt to have too many trappings about them; and the man is often chosen to paint, who paints velvets and satins best, and faces the worst. That is the reason we have them so ill done; and even if the faces are well painted, they are overpowered by the ostentation of the dress. Now, the Venetian portrait-painters contrived to keep down the glare of all this ornament, to make it even more rich, but not obtruding. I remember seeing a portrait of our queen, where, in a large bonnet, her face looked like a small pip in the midst of an orange. It would be a good thing, too, if you could contrive to spend a week or so in company with your painter before you sit, that he may know you. Many a characteristic may he lose, for want of knowing that it is a characteristic; and may give you that in expression which does not belong to you, while he may miss "your sweet expression about your eyes." He may purse up your large and generous mouth, because you may screw it for a moment to keep some ill-timed conceit from bolting out, and, besides missing that noble feature, may give you an expression of a caution that is not yours. A painter the other day, as I am assured, in a country town, made a great mistake in a characteristic, and it was discovered by a country farmer. It was the portrait of a lawyer—an attorney, who, from humble pretensions, had made a good deal of money, and enlarged thereby his pretensions, but somehow or other not very much enlarged his respectability. To his pretensions was added that of having his portrait put up in the parlour, as large as life. There it is, very flashy and very true—one hand in his breast, the other in his small-clothes' pocket. It is market-day—the country clients are called in—opinions are passed—the family present, and all complimentary—such as, "Never saw such a likeness in the course of all my born days. As like 'un as he can stare." "Well, sure enough, there he is." But at last—there is one dissentient! "'Tain't like—not very—no, 'tain't," said a heavy middle-aged farmer, with rather a dry look, too, about his mouth, and a moist one at the corner of his eye, and who knew the attorney well. All were upon him. "Not like!—How not like? Say where is it not like?" "Why, don't you see," said the man, "he's got his hand in his breeches' pocket. It would be as like again if he had his hand in any other body's pocket." The family portrait was removed, especially as, after this, many came on purpose to see it; and so the attorney was lowered a peg, and the farmer obtained the reputation of a connoisseur.

But it is high time, Eusebius, that I should dismiss you and portrait-painting, or you will think your thus sitting to me worse than sitting for your picture; which picture, if it be of my Eusebius as I know him and love him, will ever be a living speaking likeness, but if it be one but of outward feature and resemblance, it will soon pass off to make up the accumulation of dead lumber—while do you, Eusebius, as you are, vive valeque.

* * * * *



MY FRIEND.

Wouldst thou be friend of mine?— Thou must be quick and bold When the right is to be done, And the truth is to be told;

Wearing no friend-like smile When thine heart is hot within, Making no truce with fraud or guile, No compromise with sin.

Open of eye and speech, Open of heart and hand, Holding thine own but as in trust For thy great brother-band.

Patient and stout to bear, Yet bearing not for ever; Gentle to rule, and slow to bind, Like lightning to deliver!

True to thy fatherland, True to thine own true love; True to thine altar and thy creed, And thy good God above.

But with no bigot scorn For faith sincere as thine, Though less of form attend the prayer, Or more of pomp the shrine;

Remembering Him who spake The word that cannot lie, "Where two or three in my name meet There in the midst am I!"

I bar thee not from faults— God wot, it were in vain! Inalienable heritage Since that primeval slain!

The wisest have been fools— The surest stumbled sore: Strive thou to stand—or fall'n arise, I ask thee not for more!

This do, and thou shalt knit Closely my heart to thine; Next the dear love of God above, Such Friend on earth, be mine!

O.O.

LONDON, January 1844.

* * * * *

THE LAND OF SLAVES.

"Le printemps—le printemps!"—Berenger.

'Twas a sunny holiday, Scene, Killarney—time, last May; In the fields the rustic throng, Every linnet in full song, Not a cloud to threaten rain, As I walk'd with lovely Jane.

While we wander'd round the bay, Came the gayest of the gay, Pouring from a painted barge, Anchor'd by the flowery marge; Sporting round its cliffs and caves:— Ireland is the land of slaves!

Next we met an infant group, Never was a happier troop; Dancing o'er the primrose plain. "Joyous infancy!" said Jane; "Free from care as winds and waves." —"No, my darling, these are slaves!"

On we walk'd—a garden shade Show'd us matron, man, and maid, Laughing, talking, all coquetting, "Here," said Jane, "I see no fretting: Mammon makes but fools or knaves." —"No, my darling, these are slaves!"

On we walk'd—we saw a dome, Fill'd with furious dupes of Rome, Ranting of the sword and chain. "Let us run away," said Jane: "How that horrid rebel raves!" —"No, my darling, these are slaves!"

As we ran, a monster-crowd Stopp'd us, uttering vengeance loud; Giving nobles to the halter, Cursing England's throne and altar, Brandishing their pikes and staves. "Love," said Jane, "are all these slaves?"

[Greek: Aion]

* * * * *

THE PRIEST'S BURIAL.

He is dead!—he died of a broken heart, Of a frighten'd soul, and a frenzied brain: He died—of playing a desperate part For folly; which others play'd for gain. Yet o'er his turf the rebels rave! Be silent, wretches!—spare the grave!

He is dead!—bewilder'd, betray'd, beguiled; Swept on by faction's fiery blast. In its blood-stain'd track, a fool, a child! His doom is fix'd—his lot is cast. Yet scowls by his bier earth's blackest knave. Be silent, wretches!—spare the grave!

They dress'd the cold clay in mimic state, And the peasants came crowding round; And many a vow of revenge and hate In that hour on their souls was bound— Oh! ruthless creed, that never forgave! Be silent, wretches!—spare the grave!

They bore him along by the village road, And they yell'd at the village spire! And they laid him at rest in his long abode, In a storm of revenge and ire; And round him their furious banners wave. Be silent, wretches!—spare the grave!

Then o'er him the bigot chant was sung, And was said the bigot prayer, And wild hearts with many a thought were stung, That left its venom there, To madden in many a midnight cave. Be silent, wretches!—spare the grave!

All is done; he is buried—the crowd depart, He is laid in his kindred clay, There, freed from the torture that ate his heart, He rests, till the last great day. O THOU! who alone canst defend and save, Wake Ireland wise from this lowly grave.

[Greek: Aion.]

* * * * *

PRUDENCE.

"Bide your time."—Rebel Song.

Bide your time—bide your time! Patience is the true sublime. Heroes, bottle up your tears; Wait for ten, or ten score, years. Shrink from blows, but rage in rhyme: Bide your time—bide your time!

Bide your time—bide your time! Snakes are safest in their slime. Sages look before they leap; Heroes, to your hovels creep. Christmas loves pantomime: Bide your time—bide your time!

Bide your time—bide your time! "Shoulder arms"—but never prime. Keep your skins from Saxon lead; Plunder paupers for your bread. Popish begging is no crime: Bide your time—bide your time!

[Greek: Aion.]

* * * * *



FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION

Whoever has travelled in the highlands of Scotland, or the mountains of Wales, must have observed the remarkable difference which exists between artificial plantations, and the natural woods of the country. Planted all at once, the former grow up of uniform height, and all their trees present nearly the same form and symmetry. Sown at different periods, with centuries between their growth, the latter exhibit every variety of age and form, from the decaying patriarchs of the forest, which have survived the blasts of some hundred years, to the infant sapling, which is only beginning to shoot under the shelter of a projecting rock or stem. Nor is the difference less remarkable in the room which is severally afforded for growth, in the artificial plantations and in the wilds of nature. The larches or firs, in the stiff and angular enclosure, are always crowded together; and if not thinned by the care of the woodsman, will inevitably choke each other, or shoot up thin and unhealthy, in consequence of their close proximity to each other, and the dense mass of foliage which overshadows the upper part of the wood. But no such danger need be apprehended In the natural forest. No woodman is called to thin its denizens. No forester's eye is required to tell which should be left, and which cut away, in the vast array. In the ceaseless warfare of the weaker with the stronger, the feeble plants are entirely destroyed. In vain the infant sapling attempts to contend with the old oak, the branches of which overshadow its growth—it is speedily crushed in the struggle. Nor are the means of removing the useless remains less effectual. The hand of nature insensibly clears the waste of its incumbrances; the weakness of time brings them to the ground when their allotted period is expired; and youth, as in the generations of men, springs beside the decay of age, and finds ample room for its expansion over the fallen remains of its paternal stems.

The difference between the artificial plantation and the natural wood, illustrates the distinction between the imaginary communities which the political economist expects to see grow up, in conformity with his theories, and acting in obedience to his dictates, and the nations of flesh and blood which exist around us, of which we form a part, and which are immediately affected by ill-judged or inapplicable measures of commercial regulation. Nations were planted by the hand of nature; they were not sown, nor their place allotted by human foresight. They exist often close to each other, and under apparently the same physical circumstances, under every possible variety of character, age, and period of growth. The difference even between those ruled by the same government, and inhabited apparently by the same race, is prodigious. Who could suppose that the Dutchman, methodical, calculating, persevering, was next neighbour to the fiery, war-like, and impetuous Frenchman? Or that the southern and western Irish, vehement, impassioned, and volatile, came from the same stock which pervades the whole west of Britain? England, for centuries the abode of industry, effort, and opulence, is subject to the same government, and situated in the same latitude as Ireland, where indolence is almost universal, wealth rare, and manufactures in general unknown. Russia, ignorant, united, and ever victorious, adjoins Poland, weak, distracted, and ever vanquished; and Prussia has risen with unheard-of rapidity in national strength, and every branch of industry, at the very time when Spain was fast relapsing into slavery and barbarism.

Familiar as these truths are to all they seem to have been, in an unaccountable manner, forgotten by our modern political economists; and the oblivion of them is the principal cause of the remarkable failure which has attended the application to practice of all their theories. They invariably forget the different age of nations; they overlook the essential difference between communities with different national character, or in different stages of manufacturing or commercial advancement, and fall into the fatal error of supposing that one general system is to be readily embraced by, and found applicable to, a cluster of nations existing under every possible variety of physical, social, and political circumstances. Fixing their eyes upon their own country, or rather upon the peculiar interest to which they belong in their own country, they reason as if all mankind were placed in the same circumstances, and would be benefited by the arrangements which they find advantageous. They forget that all nations were not planted at the same time, nor in the same soil; that the difference in their age, the inequality in their growth, the variety in their texture, is as great as in the trees of the forest, the seeds of which have been scattered by the hand of nature; that the incessant warfare of the weaker with the stronger, exists not less in the social than the physical world; and that all systems founded on the oblivion of that continued contest, must ever be traversed by the strongest of all moral laws—the instinct of SELF-PRESERVATION.

We have said that the modern theories when applied to practice, have, in a remarkable manner, failed. In saying so, we have chiefly in view the acknowledged failure of the strenuous efforts made by England, during the last twenty years, to effect an interchange in the advantages of free trade, and the entire disappointment which has attended the long establishment, on a great scale, of the reciprocity system. To the first we shall advert in the present paper; the second will furnish ample room for reflection in another.

The abstract principles on which the doctrines of free trade are founded, are these; and we put it to the warmest advocates of those principles, whether they are not fairly stated. All nations were not intended by nature, nor are they fitted by their physical circumstances, to excel in the same branches of industry; and it is the variety in the production which they severally can bring to maturity, which at once imposes the necessity for, and occasions the profit of, commercial intercourse. Nothing, therefore, can be so unwise as to attempt, either by arbitrary regulations, to create a branch of industry in a country for which it is not intended by nature, or to retain it in that branch where it is created by forced prohibitions. Banish all restrictions, therefore, from commerce; let every nation apply itself to that particular branch of industry for which it is adapted by nature, and receive in exchange the produce of other countries, raised, in like manner, in conformity with their natural capabilities. Then will the industry of each people be turned into the channel most advantageous and lucrative to itself; each will enjoy the immense advantage of purchasing the commodities it requires at the cheapest possible rate; hopeless or absurd hot-bed attempts to force extraneous industry will cease; and, in the mutual interchange of the surplus produce of each, the foundation will be laid of an advantageous and durable commercial intercourse. England, on this principle, should not attempt to raise wine, nor France iron or cotton goods; but the calicoes and hardware of Great Britain should be exchanged for the wines and fruits of France: both nations will thus be enriched, and a vast commercial traffic grow up, which, being founded on mutual interest and attended with mutual advantage, may be expected to be durable, and to extinguish, in the end, the rivalry of their respective people, or the jealousy of their several governments.

Such is the theory of free trade; and it may be admitted it wears at first sight a seducing and agreeable aspect. Let us now enquire how far experience, the great test of truth, has verified its doctrines, or demonstrated its practicability. To illustrate this matter, we shall have recourse to no mean or doubtful authority; we shall have recourse to the statement of an enlightened but candid contemporary, whose advocating of a moderate system of free trade has excited no small anxiety in the British empire; and which report, from the information and ability it displays, has assigned to the present accomplished head of the Board of Trade.

The efforts made in Great Britain to introduce a general system of free trade, especially within the last three years, are thus enumerated in the Foreign and Colonial Review.

"England, without gaining or asking a single boon from any foreign country, has—

"1. Reduced by about one-half the duties upon foreign corn.

"2. By nearly the same amount, the duties on foreign timber.

"3. Has removed her prohibitions against the importation of cattle and other animals for food, and has fixed upon them duties, ranging on the average at about ten per cent ad valorem.

"4. Has made flesh meat admissible.

"5. Has reduced the duty on salt provisions for home consumption by one-third, and one-half; and has placed them on a footing of entire equality with the British article for the supply of the whole marine frequenting her ports.

"6. Has lowered her duties on vegetables and seeds in general to one-half, one-sixth, and even one-twelfth (in the case of that most important esculent the potatoe) of what they formerly were.

"7. Has made all great articles of manufacture, except silk, which is reserved for future negotiations, admissible at duties of ten, twelve and a half, and fifteen per cent, and only in some few instances so much as twenty per cent.

"8. Upon some minor articles of manufacture, where our people lie under heavy disadvantages in obtaining the raw material, and where their habits have been formed in their particular occupation, wholly under the shelter, and therefore upon the responsibility of the law, she has retained duties in some cases as high as thirty per cent ad valorem, but yet has reduced them to rates insignificant in comparison with those formerly charged.

"9. In her colonies, she has fixed the ordinary rules of differential duties upon foreign productions at four and seven per cent, with exceptions altogether trifling in amount, on which a higher charge has been laid for special reasons.

"10. She has withdrawn the prohibition to export machinery, except so far as regards the linen manufacture, and the spinning of the yarns employed in it.

"11. With regard to many other articles, such as butter and cheese, indeed, with regard to all articles to which the simple and essential interests of the revenue will allow the same rules to be applied—it has been declared that they are only temporarily exempted from the operations of those rules, and it is well understood, that no time will be allowed to pass, except such as is necessary, before the work is completed; and lastly,

"12. She has not even excluded from the benefit of these reductions the very countries under whose simultaneous enactments, of a hostile character, she is at this moment suffering: these advantages will be enjoyed by the tar and cordage of Russia; by the corn and timber, the woollens, linens, and hosiery of northern Germany; by the gloves, the boots and shoes, the light writing-papers, the perfumery, the corks, the straw-hats, the cottons and cambrics, the dressed skins, the thrown silk, and even (from an incidental charge with respect to the charge of duty on the bottles) the wines of France; by the salt provisions, the ashes, the turpentine, the rice, the furs and skins, the sperm oil of America; and she in particular may expect to derive advantage from the alteration in our colonial import duties upon the great articles of flour, salt, provisions, fish and lumber."[15]

[15] Foreign and Colonial Review, Vol. i. p. 235.

Such have been the sacrifices which Great Britain has recently made in order to secure a system of free commercial enterprise throughout the world. Let us now enquire what return she has met with for these concessions; and the recent occurrences in this respect are detailed in the same unexceptionable authority.

"Within the last year, France has passed an ordinance, doubling the duty on linen yarns—a measure hostile enough, had it been uniform in its application to all countries; but, lest there should be any ambiguity about its meaning, she has actually left open her Belgian frontier to that article at the former duty, on the condition that Belgium should levy the high French duty in her custom-houses, so as to prevent the transit of the British yarns through that country. To this disreputable and humiliating proposal, Belgium has consented. Again, amidst the loudest professions from the Prussian government, of an anxiety to advance the relaxation of commercial restrictions, that government has, nevertheless, adopted a proceeding not less hostile or mischievous than the measure of France with regard to linen yarns. The Congress of the Deputies of the Zollverein, at Stuttgard, have in a new tariff, which was to take effect on the 1st of January, besides some minor alterations of an unfavourable kind, decreed, upon the proposal of Prussia, that goods mixed of cotton and wool, if of more than one colour, shall pay fifty thalers the centner, instead of thirty; that is, instead of a very high, shall be liable to an exorbitant, and, as it may prove, a prohibitory duty. Next, America, as all our readers must be aware, has, after a struggle, passed a tariff, subverting altogether the arrangement established by the Compromise Act of 1833, and imposing upon the various descriptions of manufactured goods rates of duty varying from thirty to forty and fifty per cent and upwards, which have had the effect of stopping a great portion of the shipments of cotton goods to that country from Great Britain during the past autumn, and, without doubt, have added greatly to the distresses of our manufacturing population. Besides these greater instances, Russia, according to her wont in such matters, and Spain, have published, within the test fifteen months, new tariffs, of which it is difficult to say whether they are still worse than, or only as execrably bad, as those which they succeeded, but, in the close rivalry between the old and the new, the latter seem, upon the whole, entitled to the palm of prohibitive rigour. And Portugal, likewise, has augmented the duties payable upon certain classes of her imports, by a measure of the recent date of March 1841, and by another of last year. In the mean time, Spain has concluded a treaty with Belgium for the admission of her linens. And the king of Prussia has effected an arrangement with the czar, which, in certain particulars, secures, upon his own frontier, a relaxation of the iron strictness of the Russian system. England has concluded no commercial treaty with any of these powers; and the negotiation with France, which the measures of Lord Palmerston interrupted in 1840, at the very period of its ripeness, appears still to slumber—owing, we believe, in part, to the prevalence of an anti-Anglican feeling in that country, which, for the credit of common sense and of human nature, we trust will be temporary; but much more to the high protective notions, and the political activity and influence of the French manufacturers, which overawe an administration far less strong, we regret to say, than it deserves."

Our recent attempts, therefore, to introduce a general system of free trade among nations have proved a signal failure, on the admission of the most enlightened advocates for that species of policy. Nor have our earlier efforts been more successful. Mr Huskisson, as it is well known, introduced, full twenty years ago, the system of free trade, and repealed the navigation laws, in the hope of making the Northern Powers of Europe more favourable to the admission of British manufactures, and materially reduced the duties on French silks, watches, wines, and jewellery, in the hope that the Government of that country would see the expedience of making a corresponding reduction in the duties levied on our staple manufactures in the French harbours. But after twenty years' experience of these concessions on our part, the French Government are so far from evincing a disposition to meet us with a similar conciliatory policy, that they have done just the reverse. Scarce a year has elapsed without some additional duty being imposed on our fabrics in their harbours; and the great reductions contained in Sir R. Peel's tariff were immediately met, as already noticed, by the imposition of an additional and very heavy duty on British linens. Nay, so far has the free trade system been from enlarging the market for our manufactures in Europe, that after twenty years' experience of its effects, and an increase over Europe generally of fully a third in numbers, and at least a half in wealth, it is an ascertained fact, that our exports to the European-States are less than they were forty years ago.[16] "That part of our commerce," says Mr Porter, himself a decided free trader, "which, being carried on with the rich and civilized inhabitants of European nations, should present the greatest field for extension, will be seen to have fallen off in a remarkable degree. The annual average exports to the whole of Europe were less in value by nearly twenty per cent, on an average of five years, from 1832 to 1836, than they were during the five years that followed the close of the war; and it affords strong evidence of the unsatisfactory footing on which our trading regulations with Europe are established, that our exports to the United States of America, which, with their population of 12,000,000, (in 1837,) are situated 3000 miles from us across the Atlantic, have amounted to more than half the sum of our shipments to the whole of Europe, with a population fifteen times as great as that of the United States of America, and with an abundance of productions suited to our wants, which they are naturally desirous of exchanging for the produce of our mines and looms."[17]

[16] Foreign and Colonial Review, Vol. i. p. 233.

[17] Porter's Progress of the Nation, Vol. i. p. 101.

This was written by Mr Porter in 1837; but while subsequent times have evinced an increased anxiety on the part of this country to extend the principles of free trade, they have been met by such increased determination on the part of the European governments to resist the system, and adhere more rigorously to their protecting policy, that the disproportion is now universal, and is every day becoming more remarkable. The following table will show that our exports to Europe, notwithstanding our twelve reciprocity treaties with its maritime powers, and unceasing efforts to give a practical exemplification of the principles of free trade, are stationary or declining.[18]

[18] Table showing the date and value of Exports of British Iron Manufacturers to Europe in the afore-mentioned years.

Northern Europe. Southern Europe. Total. 1814 L14,113,773 L12,753,816 L26,867,589 1815 11,791,692 8,764,552 20,556,544 1816 11,369,086 7,284,467 18,653,555 1817 11,408,083 9,685,491 19,093,574 1818 11,809,243 7,639,139 19,448,382 1819 9,805,397 6,896,287 16,601,684 1820 11,289,891 7,139,042 18,428,433

1833 9,313,549 5,686,949 15,000,498 1834 9,505,892 8,501,141 18,007,033 1835 10,303,316 8,161,117 18,464,433 1836 9,999,861 9,011,205 19,000,066 1837 11,097,436 7,789,126 18,187,662 1838 11,258,473 9,481,372 20,739,845 1839 11,991,236 9,376,241 21,367,477

In one particular instance, the entire failure of the free trade system to procure any corresponding return from the very continental states whose harbours it was chiefly intended to open, has been singularly conspicuous. In February 1821 the reciprocity system, in regard to shipping, was introduced by Mr Huskisson, and acted upon by the legislature; and the following reason was assigned by that eminent man for deviating from the old navigation laws of Cromwell, which had so long constituted the strength of the British navy. Mr Huskisson maintained—"That the period had now arrived, when it had become indispensable to introduce a more liberal system in regard to the admission of foreign shipping into our harbours, if we would avoid the total exclusion of our manufacturers into their harbours. The exclusive system did admirably well, as long as we alone acted upon it; when foreign nations were content to take our goods, though we excluded their shipping. But they had now become sensible of the impolicy of such a system, and, right or wrong, were resolved to resist it. Prussia, in particular, had resisted all the anxious endeavours of this country, to effect the introduction of goods of our manufacture, on favourable terms, into her harbours; and the reason assigned was, that the navigation laws excluded her shipping from ours. The reciprocity system has been rendered indispensable by the prohibitory system, which the other European powers have adopted. The only means of meeting the heavy duties they have imposed on our goods and shipping, is to place our duties upon a system of perfect reciprocity with theirs. Foreign nations have no advantage over us in the carrying trade: from the London report, it clearly appeared, that the ships of Norway, Sweden, Russia, Prussia, France, and Holland, cannot compete with British, either in long or short voyages. But at any rate, the repeal of our discriminating duties has become matter of necessity, if we would propose any trade with these countries."[19]

[19] Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, February 13, 1823; and Annual Register, 1823, p. 104.

Table showing the British and Foreign tonnage, with Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Prussia, since 1823, when the reciprocity system began, in each of the following years:—

SWEDEN. NORWAY. DENMARK. PRUSSIA. Years British Foreign British Foreign British Foreign British Foreign Tons. Tons Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons. 1821 23,005 8,508 13,855 61,342 5,312 3,969 79,590 37,720 1822 20,799 13,692 13,377 87,974 7,096 3,910 102,847 58,270 1823 20,986 22,529 13,122 117,015 4,413 4,795 81,202 86,013 1824 17,074 40,092 11,419 135,272 6,738 23,689 94,664 151,621 1825 15,906 53,141 14,825 157,910 15,158 50,943 189,214 182,752 1826 11,829 16,939 15,603 90,726 22,000 56,544 119,060 120,589 1827 11,719 21,822 13,945 96,420 10,825 52,456 150,718 109,184 1828 14,877 24,700 10,826 85,771 17,464 49,293 133,753 99,195 1829 16,536 25,046 9,985 86,205 24,576 53,390 125,918 127,861 1830 12,116 23,158 6,459 84,585 12,210 51,420 102,758 139,646 1831 11,450 39,689 4,518 114,865 6,552 62,190 83,908 140,532 1832 8,335 25,755 3,798 82,155 7,268 35,772 62,079 89,187 1833 10,009 29,454 5,901 98,931 6,840 38,620 41,735 108,753 1834 15,353 35,910 6,403 98,303 5,691 53,282 32,021 118,111 1835 12,036 35,061 2,592 95,049 6,007 49,008 25,514 124,144 1836 10,865 42,439 1,573 12,875 2,152 51,907 42,567 174,439 1837 7,608 42,602 1,035 88,004 5,357 55,961 67,566 145,742 1838 10,425 38,991 1,364 110,817 3,466 57,554 86,734 175,643 1839 8,359 42,270 2,582 109,228 5,535 106,960 111,470 229,208 1840 11,933 53,337 3,166 114,241 6,327 103,067 112,709 237,984

—PORTER'S Part. Tables.

Such were Mr Huskisson's reasons. They were grounded on alleged necessity. He said in substance:—"The navigation laws are very good things; and if we could only persuade other nations to take our goods, while we virtually shut out their shipping, it would, doubtless, be very advisable to continue the present system. But you can no longer do this. Foreign nations see the undue advantage which has been so long obtained of them. They insist upon an exchange of interests. We, as the richer and the more powerful, are called on to make the first advances. We must relinquish our navigation laws in favor of their staple manufacture, shipping, if we would induce them to admit, on favourable terms, our staple article, cotton goods." These were Mr Huskisson's principles; and it may be admitted that, in the abstract, they were well-founded, for all commercial intercourse, to be beneficial and lasting, must be founded on a mutual exchange of advantages. But, in carrying into execution this principle, he committed a fatal mistake, which has already endangered, without the slightest advantage, and, if persevered in, may ultimately destroy the commercial superiority of Great Britain. He virtually repealed, by the 4 Geo. IV. c. 77 and the 5 Geo. IV. c. 1, the navigation laws, by authorizing the King, by an order in council, to permit the exportation and importation of goods in foreign vessels, on payment of the same duties as where chargeable on British vessels, in favour of those countries which did not levy discriminating duties on British vessels bringing goods into their harbours, and to levy on the vessels of such countries the same tonnage duties as they charged on British vessels. This was, in effect, to say—We will admit your vessels on the same terms on which you admit ours; and nothing, at first sight, could seem more equitable.