The Novelist.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 214, 16 October 1875, Page 3

The Novelist.

READY-MONEY MORTIBOY. A MATTER-OF-FACT STORY. (From Cassell’s Magazine.) Chapter' XX. The very top attic of a very high house, iu a street near the Mansion House. The sun shining brightly in at the window, and baking the slates overhead. The windows shut close, nevertheless. A queer room : the roof illshapen, and the windows odd. The only furniture a bench or table of rough deal, running across the place just under the windows. The floor stained of a thousand hues ; every inch of its surface is saturated ■with paints and varnishes upset over it. The walls plastered with scrapings of thousands of palettes, dried on in parti-colored patches, and decorated with half a dozen soiled and smoke-begrimed cardboard scrolls, on which are written, like so many texts—“ The eleventh commandment: Mind your own business,” “From witchcraft, priestcraft, and kingcraft, good Lord, deliver us,” and such-like legends, the work of a former prisoner there. Onthefloorisagreat stack of pictures, which have been taken out of their frames in order to undergo the process of cleaning ; gallon cans of copal and mastic varnish stand by them, in readiness for the varnishing. At the bench stands a young man in his shirt sleeves, rubbing away as hard as he can at the resinous surface of an oil painting, rapidly getting the old varnish off with his finger ends, and working down to tho artist’s colors again. He works with a will, singing at his work in the finest tenor voice you ever heard outside the walls of the Covent Garden Opera House. It is Frank Melliship. How he came here I will briefly explain. When ruin comes upon a young gentleman of expensive tastes, who has received the very best, and consequently the least useful, education that his country has to boast of, it generally finds him in a helpless and very defenceless condition. This was, as we have seen, Frank Melliship’s lot. He had no longer any money to spend, and he had not been taught how to get. any. Poverty would not have frightened him much, because he was young, and did not know what it meant : what grinding yeai’s of self-sacrifice and denial, what bitterness of struggle, and what humiliations. But there were his mother and sister. To knock about for a year or two—no young man thinks he is going to be poor after five-and-twenty or so—would have had the charm of novelty. But for these two—the delicately reared gentlewomen—the change from the house at Market Basing to tho miserable lodgings in Fitzroy-street, off the Fulham-road, was indeed a plunge. And though Kate did her best bravely to meet the inevitable, their mother, a week and watery creature, never attempted to conceal the misery of her new position, and to lament the glories, whicli she naturally exaggerated, of the past. “What have wo done,” she would say at each fresh reminder of the social fall—“ what did we do to merit all this ?”

Frank and Kate, with the sanguine enthusiasm which belonged to their father’s blood as well as to their time of life, tried to cheer her with pictures of the grand successes which were to come ; but in vain. The good lady would only relapse into another of her weeping fits, and he taken to her room, crying, “Oh ! Francis—oh ! my poor husband !” till the enthusiasm wa3 damped, and the present brought back to the brother and sister in all its nakedness.

Every day they took counsel together. Frank’s bedroom, metamorphosed by Kate’s clever hands till it looked no more like a bedroom than Mr. Swiveller’s one apartment, served as their studio. An inverted case—which once, in what lodging-house keepers call their “happier days,” had contained Clicquot or gooseberry—served as a platform, on which Frank stood for a model to his sister. They called it their throne. “ Do—my dear good boy—do hold out your arm as I placed it,” says Mistress Kate, sketching in rapidly, while Frank stands as motionless as he can before her in the best suit he ha 3 left. “ I have wasted I don’t know how much time to-day in getting up to put you right.”

“My dear girl, can I stand—l put it to you —can I stand like a semaphore for an hour at a time ? Even a semaphore’s arm 3 go up and down, you know.”

“ Yes, I know, Frank, it’s dreadfully tiresome, as I found when I sat for your Antigone. But see how patient I was.” _ The advantage was certainly on Frank’s side, because Kate would stand in tho same position for half an hour at a time—twice as long as a professional model. “ How far have you got, Kate ?” “ Don’t move now—a moment more—only five minutes, and I shall have finished the outline.” She is sketching on a boxwood block. It was the first order they had received ; it was to illustrate a poem in a magazine, and the price was three guineas. “ If you go on at this rate,” said Frank, “ it will pay a great deal better than oils. Why, you can do a block a day—easily—working up your back grounds by candle-light.” “ Yes—if we can get the orders ; hut you must not forget the trouble wo had in getting tho first.” “ C’est le commencement,” said Frank. “ Et gai, gai—” he began to sing. “ Do not move just now. Please don’t.” “ ‘ Eergeronnette, Douco balsselettc, Donnez-lo mol, votro chapelot,’ ” sang her model, with one of his happy laughs, “ Don’t you remember, Katie, when I sang that jolly old French song last at Parkside, when Grace played the accompaniment V

Dearest Grace ! When shall I see her again ?” “ Let ns talk seriously,” said Kate. “I am sure mamma must go away into the country somewhere. We could live cheaper than we can in London, and I know she would get back her health at some quiet seaside place ; and I could fill my sketch-book with pretty bits, and work them up into landscapes, like those yon sold—” “For fifteen shillings each,” Frank laughed. His experience of picture selling had been rather disheartening. But still he hoped ; nor was it natural that he should not do so. He had a strong taste for art. He could do what few young men can do—draw nicely. He had been famous for his pen-and-ink sketches at Cambridge; but Kate was much more proficient with her pencil than he was. Kate guided their course. She chose the lodgings near the Museum. She was bursar for the family, and did the marketing, often at night, in the Fulham-road ; for her mother would speedily have outrun the constable by a distance. As it was, John Heatlicote’s gift was reduced to small dimensions. Grace’s hundred pounds Frank held sacred/ proposing to use it for his mother. Kate took the necessary steps to their painting at the public galleries. They went at first on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays to the Museum. Then Frank went on Thursdays and Fridays to the National Gallery, leaving Kate to go to the South Kensington Museum by herself. They wanted to learn Art. Now, Art is learned, they had been told, by copying. So they set to work to copy. Kate spent three days a week foi four months at Dyekraans’ “ Blind Beggar.” It is a pretty picture, but copying it teaches nothing. She found that out before it was half done ; but she made a splendid copy of it on panel, like the original. Frank copied Sir Joshua’s “Heads of Angels,” at the National. In this work there was something to be learnt. The softness, the delicacy, the angelic expression of those little cherubs’ heads, all painted from one tiny mortal face, showed the student of art what it is in the hands of a master. And Reynolds is a master for a very unartistic nation to be proud of. Frank had finished this picture when Kate’s “ Blind Beggar ” was half done. The copy he made was very good. At the Gallery the old women praised it ; and as they had often copied it themselves, they were judges. A dealer who came in one students’ day called it “ clever.” He was a burly man, with a tremendously red nose that told it’s own tale of knock-outs. This professional opinion encouraged Frank. He had hoped to sell it to some of those connoisseurs of art who loiter round the students’ easels on closed days ; but there had been no bid.

He had it framed ; it happened to be at the shop of the red-nosed man, whose name was Burls. He paid two pounds ten shillings for an appropriate Reynolds frame for it. Then he put his picture into a cab, and tried the dealers all over the West-end with it.

“ What ! buy a copy of a picture in the National Gallery ? Not unless we know where we could place it!”

It was a knock-down blow for our innocent young artist ; but it was the answer he got everywhere, from rough dealers and smooth, Hebrew and Gentile. So, at last, in despair, he left it at an auction room in Bond-street, where a fortnight afterwards, Kate and he attended, and bought it in at two pounds seven and sixpence—half a crown less than the frame that was on it had cost him : and he had five per cent, commission to pay, and the cost of taking it home. This opened his eyes to the trade value of copies of pictures that are known.

A young lady at the Museum made friends with Kate—they all made friends with one another—and exhorted her to try at working on wood. So with Frank and her mother for models, and a back-ground out of her sketch book, she made a pretty picture, and despatched Frank to lay siege to the editors.

He took a few water-color sketches of his own with him, to show at one or two pictureshops where he had seen similar sketches displayed in the windows. He tried two shops—one was near Piccadilly —in his walk towards the publishers’ shops. He was not afraid of talking to the shopkeepers, but he did feel a little nervous at the prospect of bearding an editor in his den. So he showed his sketches, with some success. The answer at both the shops was—- “ Do me some with shorter petticoats, and I’ll give you forty-two shillings a dozen for them.”

The shops were kept by brothers, and Frank’s sketches were pretty young ladies. He profited by this experience. He spent that afternoon, and the next, and the next after that in calling at different places with the inquiry, “ Is the editor of the So-and--80 in ?”

With one result. The editor never was in—to a young man who did not know his name. At night, after the third of these excursions, he felt embittered towards these gentlemen, and told Kate he thought they might as well put their block in the fire, it would warm them so.

The weather was as warm as Frank’s temper. Kate reproved him, and gave him her royal commands to try again. “And now, Frank,” she said after their mother had gone to bed, “ I have made up my mind to go away from London, and take mamma with me—to Wales, I think. Living is cheap there, and the scenery is beautiful. She must be taken out of London.”

Frank felt rather glad at this. He thought his mother and sister would be better in the country for a few months. When they came back to him, he meant to have a home for them.

“ And I’ll tell you why, Frank. I shall finish my picture; but it is not easy to do that. There are three people at it now—such a vulgar man ; and oli! two such vulgar women —and they race on a Wednesday morning to get up the stairs before me, and secure their seats for the week close to the picture. The

man elbows roughly by me, and I can hardly get a look at the picture myself.” Frank began to fume—his fingers tingled. “ The authorities should make some proper rules, I think, for I began my copy before any of them. Of course, I can't race up the stairs with them, and tear through the rooms to be first at the picture ; and, then, Frank—you'll promise me to do as I tell you ?” “ I don’t know, Kate. I think I shall be at the top of the stairs before that fellow some day soon—” “ There now, I have done if you do not give me your word.” “ Well—there, then—go on.” “ Well, Frank, an old man—nobleman, they say he is—has been very attentive.” Her brother gave an angry snort, and his eyes looked very mischievous. “ Don’t be angry—he is too ridiculous—the funniest old object, with teeth, and a wig, and stays, and a gold-headed cane. He wants to buy the ‘Blind Beggar,’ and has given me advice I don’t want about painting it ; and to-day, Frank—” “ To-day, Kate ?”

“He brought me a bouquet, which of course I declined to accept. But I thought it best to put away my picture, and leave the gallery.” “ I shall be there to-morrow.” He was, nearly every day after till Kate had finished her picture. But the Earl of only paid one more visit to the Museum during his stay in town that season.

In the afternoon of the day on which Frank had given his card to his sister’s admirer, he determined to try his luck again with the block and the portfolio of sketches. At the first place he called at, the man he saw took his name up to the editor of the magazine, and to his great surprise, he was asked to walk upstairs.

He found himself in a dingy room, in the presence of a fatherly young man, with a grave but land face.

Frank told him how surprised he was at having the oppportunity of showing his specimens, aud asking for work.

The editor of the “Universal Magazine” was a scholar and a gentleman. He drew the young man out, looked at his sketches, and gave him a few words of judicious praise. “But I don’t use any blocks. The ‘ Universal’ is not an illustrated magazine.” Frank was disappointed. “I really had not thought of that,” he stammered out.

“ But I am always ready to help anybody I can. Wait a minute, Mr. Melliship. Your sister’s drawings are really clever, and the sort of thing that is wanted. I will give you a note to a friend of mine who uses a great many illustrations.” He handed Frank the letter, adding, “ I shall be glad to hear of your success some day when you are passing this way. Stay, I will give you something else.” Ho wrote rapidly for five or six minutes, and then handed Frank a list of all the illustrated magazines of standing and respectability, with the names of their editors.

“ I have put a star to those where you may just mention my name.”

Frank thanked his new friend very sincerely, and bowed himself out—to get an order for a block fifteen minutes after. “The editor of the “Universal” blew down a pipe at his desk. Whistle. “Sir ?”

“ Look in the contributor’s book, vol. xxvil. Who wrote the article on ‘ Commercial Morality ’ ?” After an interval of ten minutes, a whistle in the editor’s room. “Well ?” “Mr. Francis Melliship, banker, Market Basing, Holmshire.” “ Ah, I thought I knew the name. If lam not mistaken, I shall be able to pay this young man what his father refused to receive, the honorarium for several articles he did for us.” He entered Frank’s name in his note-book.

But Frank was not the sort of gentleman to be helped. He would not ask anybody for assistance. Dick Mortiboy would have helped him ; John Heathcote would have helped him; and in London, a dozen men who had known his father would have taken him by the hand. But Frank was too proud. He would make his own way—to Grace. It was always Grace, this goal he was hastening to. He devoured her letter to Kate. He inspired Kate’s epistles in reply. “Burn the boy’3 nonsense,” honest John Heathcote had said a dozen times. “If we could only get at him, we might do something for him. Painter ! I would as soon see a boy of mine a fuller.”

But Mrs. Heathcote was rather pleased than not.

“ What in the world can he do without any money ?” she said. “If his father had brought him up to something, he would have stood the same chance as other people.”

As the summer advanced, Mrs. Melliship’s health became worse, and it was decided that Kate and she should go away into Wales. Kate had sold her “Blind Beggar” for twenty pounds, and with this money they paid their few debts, and Frank saw them off.

The world was before him. Fie took a lodging in Islington, and went on with his painting. He still meant to be famous. One fine morning he had no money left except a five-pound note he had resolved never to break into. This brought him down from the clouds. He had not been successful in getting any work for the magazines, so he determined, at whatever sacrifice, to turn-his “Angels’ Heads” into money.

lie took it first to Mr. Burls’s shop, and told the picture-dealer he had tried hard to sell it before, but had been unable to dispose of it. “ It isn’t in our way, sir.”

“Is it in anybody’s way 1” asked Frank. “ I should think not. Copies aren’t no good at all.”

“ Would you give me anything for it ?” asked the young man. “ Well, you may leave it if you like. I’ve got a customer I don’t mind Bhowiug it to.”

Frank called again a few days after. “ I’ll give you six pounds for it, and then I dare say I shall lose by it,” said Mr. Burls. He had sold it for eighteen guineas to a customer who collected Sir Joshuas, and bought copies when the originals were not likely to come into the market. But Frank did not know this. He accepted the six pounds eagerly. “ I’m a ready-money man, my lad—there’s your coin.”

“ Thank you,” said Frank, pocketing the six sovereigns. “ You have a great many pictures, Mr. Burls.”

And he might have added, “very great rubbish they are.” “ There’s seventeen hundred pictures in this honse, from cellar to garrets, lad,” said the dealer.

They stood in stacks, eight or ten thick, round the cellar, down the open trap of which Frank could see. They were piled everywhere. One canvas, thirty feet by ten, was screwed up to the ceiling. They were numberless pictures of every age and school, Titans and Tenierses, Snyderses and Watteaus : all the kings of England, from the Conqueror down to William IY. ; ancestors ready for hanging in the pseudo-baronial halls of the nouveuux riches ; —in a word, furniture pictures by the gross. “If there was seventeen hundred before, yours makes the seventeenth hundred and onetli, don’t it ?” The dealer was pleased to joke. His shopman laughed, and Frank did too. He had put his pride in liis pocket, for Mr. Burls amused him.

“ Now, this here Sir Joshua ought to be wet, and not to ask you to stand, suppose we torse.” Frank assented, lost, and paid for three glasses.

“ Where’s Critchett ?—I haven’t seen him to-day ?” Mr. Burls asked of his man. “He has not turned up. The old complaint, I expect.” “Well, you can tell him from me, when he does turn up, lie’s got to the end of his tether,” said Mr. Burls, very angrily. “Be dashed if I employ such a vagabond any longer. There’s this picture of Mr. Thingamy’s for him to restore, aud I promised it this week faithfully.” “ He’s often served you so before,” said the man.

But this remark did not soothe the dealer. It made him only the more angry. Now, Mr. Frank Melliship had got to the end of his tether, too, for he had only the six pounds 110 had just received, and no immediate prospect of being able to earn more.

Opportunity comes once in a way to every man. It had come to Frank, and he determined to make the most of it.

“ Could I restore the picture for you ?” It was a great ugly daub—a copy, a hundred years old probably, of some picture in a Dutch gallery—and stood on the floor by Frank. Doubtless it had a value in the eyes of its owner, who thought it worthy of restoration : but a viler, blacker tatterdemalion of a canvas you never saw.

At Frank’s question, Mr. Burls opened his eyes very wide. “ Show us your hands,” lie said. “ That’s what they say to beggars as say they’re innocent at the station. Ah ! I thought so—you ain’t done any hard work. Now perhaps you’re what I call a gingerbread gentlemen. Are you ?” The color mounted to Frank’s cheeks. “ I want employment. lam a poor man.” “ He ain’t no use to us—is he, Jack ?” Jack, Mr. Burls’s man, shook his head. “ I could repaint that picture where it wants it,” said Frank.

“ Did you ever restore a picture before ? Restoring’s an art : it’s a thing as isn’t learnt in a moment, I can tell you. * Pictures cleaned, lined, and restored by a method of our own invention, -without injury, and a moderate charge,” said Mr. Burls, quoting an inscription in gilt letters over Frank’s head. “ Now, did you ever clean a picture ?” “No,” said Frank.

“Do you think you could do the painting part if I taught you how to clean and restore on the system I invented myself ?” “I think I could,” said Frank. “ But if I teach you the secrets of the trade, what are you going to give me ?”

“ I’m afraid I can’t afford to give you anything,” said Frank, “except labor.” “ It’s worth fifty pounds to anybody to know. Critchett might have made a fortune at it. Look at me. I began as an errand boy. I’m not ashamed of it. A good restorer can always keep himself employed.” “Indeed,” said Frank—who contemplated with admiration a man who had been the founder of his own fortune—“ I should very much like to learn the art of restoring, as I have not been successful in getting a living as an artist.”

“Well,” said the dealer, “ I’ll see first what you’re up to, and whether you can paint well enough for me if I was to teach you the restoring. You may come upstairs. Bring that picture up on your shoulder.” Frank hoisted the canvas aloft, and followed Mr. Burls up the stairs. CIIArTER XXI. It was not very easy for Frank to get the picture round the turns of the narrow staircase, which led from Mr. Burls’s shop to the room above, which he called the gallery. In this room, Frank saw that there were a number of pictures hanging round the walls, and on several tall screens. They were of a better class than those in the shop. Mr. Burls led the way through the gallery to a narrow flight of stairs at the end. Mounting these, with the canvas on his shoulder, Frank found more rooms full of pictures, framed and unframed, in stacks that reached up to his chin. On the floor above, a number of men were employed in gilding and repairing frames. Up one more flight of stairs, and they were on the attic floor, apparently the sanctum of Mr. Critchett, the restorer—for in a little backroom were his easels and palettes, and his battered

tubes of paint, aud several short aud very black clay pipes. “I find the materials,” said Mr. Burls. “I’ve paid for all the paints and brushes, so I suppose they’re mine.” “ Certainly,” said Frank. “ Now you can set to work on that Teniers as you’ve carried upstairs ; andtheu I shall see what you’re up to, and whether you’ll suit me. If you ain’t got all the paints you want, come to me.”

With this remark, Mr. Burls left Frank ; and, pulling off his coat, set to work himself in the front room, a short description of which I gave at the beginning of my last chapter. Left to himself, Frank looked about him. There was a good light, to the north ; but when he stood upright anywhere in the room, his head nearly touched the ceiling.

The prospect from his window was limited almost entirely to tiles and chimney pots. Pasted to the walls were a number of prints of the most celebrated characters of English history, which—as Frank rightly guessed—were used in the production of the genuine antique portraits which were founded upon them. Mr. Critchett had left a Queen Elizabeth, in a great starched ruff and jewelled stomacher, in an unfinished state on his easel.

The furniture of his atelier was by no means luxurious. It consisted of a cane-seated chair, with three orthodox legs, and an old mahl-stick for a fourth. A high rush hassock, tied on this chair, led Frank to suppose that his predecessor had been a short man. There were, besides, three easels, a fireplace with a black kettle on the hob, and several canvases, some new, some old in the corners ; and this was all.

Having made this short tour of inspection, Frank settled down at once to his work.

He found it easy ; —little patches of paint gone here and there all over the portrait ; and he supplied these, carrying out, as well as he could interpret it, the design of the original painter. Mr. Burls was constantly walking in and out of the room, and volunteex-ing unnecessary pieces of advice.

At four o’clock he left off “chafing” his pictures, and looked in at Frank, smearing his coarse liands with spirits, to get off the dirt with which they were ditched. “There,” said he, “I’ve done for to-day. I’ve chafed fifteen pictures : that’s fifteen pound earned. I shall chai-ge them a quid apiece for doing ’em. I don’t work for nothing, and I don’t know anybody in the picture trade that does.”

At six, he came up to Frank again, and looked at his work.

“That’ll do, my lad—that’ll do,” and went away again.

Tliis cheered Fi-ank, and he worked as long as it was light, and walked home to his lodgings at Islington a happy man. Next day he finished the job, and Mr. Burls passed judgment on his work. It was favorable to him ; and he was duly installed in the place of Critchett, kicked out. Frank wrote and told his sister and mother, staying at Llan-y-Fyddloes, that he bad got regular employment that suited him very well, and that his prospects were brightening. He did this to cheer them, and to some extent he believed what he said.

“If,” he wx’ote to Kate, “I can only earn enough to keep myself, and send something every week to you, by the work I am at, and still leave myself time for study and improvement, I am satisfied. Depend upon it, you shall see me in the catalogue at the Academy before long, No. 00001, ‘ Interior of a studio,’ by ” drawing a very fair likeness of himself by way of signature to his letter. He said nothing to Kate about the amount of money he could earn at his new work, nor did he tell her what it was exactly. His reason for the first was that he wrote his letter before he had settled terms with Mr. Burls ; for the second, because he knew his mother would become hysterical at the bare idea of her son working for a living in any but the most gentlemanlike manner, such as society permits. Now, for his part, Frank saw nothing degrading in any honest labor, and was quite content to put up for a while with such humble occupation.

“Hang it,” he thought, “I’d rather do it than sponge on somebody else.” But Kate guessed it was something rather beneath his dignity to do, he was so reserved. His arrangement with the picture dealer was in these terms :

Burls : “ I’m fair and straight, I am. I should not have got on if I’d done as many chaps do.” Frank : “To be sure. I think lam tolerably straightforward, too, Mr. Burls. I hope so, at least.”

Burls : “ I don’t know anything about you. do I?”

Frank (reddening): “No.” Burls : “ Well, I don’t want to ask no questions, my lad.”

The man’s familiarity was disgusting. It was a fine lesson in self-command for Frank to make himself stomach it.

“You want work, and I’ll give you some. You can work for me instead of old Critchett. I’m fair and straight with you. Some chaps would want you to work sixmonthsfor nothing.” Frank : “ I could not do that.”

Burls, continuing : “ I don’t ask you. You shall have what Critchett had—that’s a shillin’ an hour ; and handsome pay, too, I call it. I like to pay my chaps well, Regular work, too. You may work eight hours a day if you like, and then you’ll take eight and forty shillin’ a week, you know.” Mi\ Burls appealed to his shopman to support his statement that Frank’s predecessor often “ took eight and forty a week.” The terms seemed fair ; though the remuneration for restoring, which required artistic skill, seemed to Frank to bear no just proportion to the money to be got by cleaning—for Mi\ Burls earned fifteen pounds before dinner at that, Frank recollected. However, he could hardly expect to get more than Critchett had received before him ; so he agreed to take a shilling an hour, aud work regularly for Mr. Burls. Burls: “Done, then, and settled. We don’t

want any character, do we, Jack ? Pictures aint easy things to carry out of the shop, are they ?” Prank (very angry) : “ Sir !” Burls : “No offence. Don’t get angry. It was only a hint that we should not trouble you forreferences to your last employment. Rec’lect what I said about those hands. You’ve been brought up a gentleman, I dare say, but you’re right not to starve your belly to feed your pride.. Don’t be angry with me. I’m straight and fair, I am. You’ll find me that.”

I have now explained how Frank came to be in the top attic of Mr. Burls’s house of business. He remained in his situation about three months. While there, he learned a great deal. Mr. Burls took 3, fancy to him, and soon came to stand a little in awe of him—for he was educated and honest, and, in addition, plainly a gentleman. The dealer was very ignorant, and, from any point of view but that of his own class of traders, very dishonest—that is, he looked upon the public, his customers, as fair game ; and would tell any lie, and any sequence of lies, to sell a spurious picture for and at the price of a genuine picture. The morals of commerce, in the hands of the Burlses, find their lowest ebb. But, to some extent, their customers make them what they are. If a man who has money to spend on his house will have pictures for his walls, why not prefer a new picture to an old one ? Why not an honest print before a dishonest canvas ?

But it is always the reverse. He has a hundred pounds to lay out, and he wants ten pictures for the money—bargains—speculative pictures, with famous names to them, which he can comment on and enlarge upon, and point out the beauties of to his friends, until he actually comes to believe the daub he gave ten guineas for is a Turner ; and the dealers can find him hundreds.

_ Why, the old masters must have painted pictures faster than they could nowadays print them, if a quarter of the things that are sold in their names were their true works. There are probably more pictures ascribed to any one famous old master now for sale in the various capitals of Europe, than he could have produced had he painted a complete work every day, from the day he was bom till the day he died—and lived to be seventy, too. Burls could find his customers anything they asked for. No painter so rare, so sought after, or so obscure, but there were some works of his, a bargain, in the dealer’s stock. He tohl Frank his history :

“ My father wore a uniform : lie was a parkkeeper in Kensington Gardens. I went to school till I was thirteen, then I went out as an errand boy. My master was a dealer, in St. James’s street. I got to learn the gilding and cleaning ; and when I was six-and-twenty, I earned two pounds a week. Well, my father had an old friend, and he had some money left him. He gave his son two hundred pounds, and we went into business. His son died before we’d been partners a year. I bought his share, and here I am. I shall die worth a hundred thousand pounds, Shipley”—(this was Frank’s name at Mr. Burls’s) —“ and this business thrown in—marie my words.” This was his story, and it was true. Like all men who have risen from nothing, Mr. Burls was inordinately pleased with himself. He attributed to his great ability what really ought to have been put down to his great luck. He would be a fine specimen for the “ SelfHelp” collection in Mr. Samuel Smiles’s book.

“ Mind you,” he often said to Frank, “ there aint a man in ten thousand that could have done what I’ve done.”

Now, Burls’s life, as I read it and as Frank read it, was simply an example of the power of luck. Serving under a kind master, who lets him learn his trade. Luck. Finding a man who wants to put his son into business, and is willing to trust him. Luck. Getting all to himself. Luck. His shop pulled down by the Board of Works, in order to widen a street. Compensation paid just when lie wants money, at the end of his second year’s trade. Luck. And so on. Look into every adventure he has made, luck crowned it with success. And how we all worship success that brings wealth ! Why, weak Mrs. Mellisliip would rather have seen Frank succeed in making himself as rich as Dick Mortiboy, than that his name should have been handed down to endless centuries as the writer of a greater epic than Milton, or the painter of a greater picture than the greatest of Kapha el’s cartoons, Frank, on the other hand, never told al l his story to his employer ; but he was constrained to explain why he was in a position so different to that in which he had been brought up. And lie did it in a few words, and without any expression of complaint. Burls only knew that his father had lost money by rash speculation, and had died, leaving Frank without resources. He did not inquire further, but remarked—- “ What aint in my business is in the three percent. Consols. Your father’s ought to have been there.”

Soon there came a very busy time at cleaning pictures, and Burls asked Frank to help him.

He found it a mighty simple matter, though it rubbed the skin off his fingers at first. “Lay the canvas down,” said Burls, “and rub it. If the varnish comes off after a few rubs of your finger, it’s mastic, and ’ll all rub off clear down to the paint. If it won’t chafe, it’s copal, and you must get it off with spirits, and be careful not to take the paint away with it. I’ve seen that done often.”

So Frank and Burls spent much of their time together, chafing the dirty varnish off old pictures. When they had rubbed it off, and got down to the paint, one or the other dipped a wide brush in mastic varnish, dabbed it on like whitewash on a ceiling, and then laid the canvas flat on the floor of the next room.

“It all dries down smooth enough,” Burls said. “ That’s the beauty of it.” And this, gentle British public, is the art of cleaning old oil paintings on a system invented by ourßelves, without the slightest injury or damage, advertised by Bartholomew Burls & Co., Church-street, City. Country orders care-

fully attended to. And you are charged for it entirely according to Mr. Burls’s belief in your capacity to pay—sometimes ten shillings, sometimes ten pounds ; but the process is always the same, and it takes a very slightly skilled laborer any time from fifteen minutes to sixty to complete the operation. Sometimes the pictures wanted repainting in places ; then Frank took them into his own room, and did what was required, before they were varnished off. “Mind you, cleaning’s an art, and I’ve taught it you,” Mr. Burls would say. For painting and painters 110 had a proper contempt. He bought their works so cheap, and they—at least, the specimens he saw—were always such poor devils., But gilding frames, cleaning and restoring pictures—these were profitable arts and he respected them. He told Frank many queer anecdotes of the trade, of his customers, and how he had imposed upon their credulity. And how credulous customers are, only such men as Mr. Burls know.

He told him tales of the sales and knockouts ; and one day took him to one at a public home in Pall-mall, where Frank formed an acquaintance with the habits, customs, and language of the trade, and saw all the lots they had bought at Christie’s put up again, and resold among themselves at a good profit. “ Look at that,” said Mr. Burls one day to Frank—“that’s a seller, ain’t it ? I lay you a new hat I don’t have that here a fortnight, and I shall ask sixty guineas for it.” “ Is it not the one that has been in the shop some time ?” Frank asked.

“ No, it ain’t ; but it’s the own brother to it, and here’s two more of the family—only they ain’t done up yet,” said the dealer, pulling down two other canvases from a rack. Frank opened his eyes—wide.

The pictures were landscapes in the style of Claude. The first was cracked all over, respectably dirty, and looked certainly a hundred years old. The paint of the other two was scarcely dry. “It would have deceived me, I believe,” said Frank.

“Deceiveanybody,” said Mr. Burls. “Now, you wouldn’t look at that picture and think it’s only a month old, would you ? That’s all it is. It was like these here two a monthago. I’vesold four or five of ’em.”

“It would not do to sell them to intimate friends, would it ?” said Frank. “Trust me for that. I send ’em about the country. I’ve bought everything lately at an old maiden lady’s at Bexley Heath, and described the place to the customers ; but I think I’ve used it up about. Give us a good name, now, of a place for stuff to come from.”

Frank thought a moment, and suggested Compton Green. “Where’s Compton Green?” asked Mr. Burls.

“ It’s five miles from Market Basing, in Holmshire,” said Frank.

“Well, I’ll try Compton Green. I’ve got a customer coming to look at some pictures to-day. I hope it’ll be as lucky as Bexley Heath has been. Jack and me’s sold some hundreds now, I think, from there ; so it’s time we had a change.”

“ Do,” said Frank, “It has one advantage, at all events, nobody will know it.”

“ Now I’m to show my customer this Claude. I wish I’d got a dozen as good. It cost me fifteen pounds ; and it wasn’t painted half a mile from where we stand. I want some imitations. Couldn’t you paint me some ?”

Frank tried; and, after some time, succeeded, to Mr. Burls s entire satisfaction, in imitating Old Cuyp. “That’s right enough,” said the dealer. “ I’ll give you ten pound a piece for a dozen as good as that.” Frank was delighted. Here was fortune come at last.

“I’m fair and straight, I am,” said the dealer. “There aint much in painting ’em when you’ve been showed what’s wanted. It’s the doing ’em up. That’s a secret as only a few of us have got. It cost me something to learn it, I can tell you. I paid for it, and it's paid me. This picture, when I’ve done with it, 11 be worth sixty, if it’s worth a sovereign. But there s art, I can tell you, in doing what I do to ’em.”

There always was, according to Mr. Burls’s version of the case, art in doing anything to a picture but painting it. Frank watched the processes his picture went through with interest. It went to be lined, and stretched on an old strainer. As it was to be an old picture, the supposed old canvas it was painted on must be concealed by a lining. Then it received several coats of mastic varnish, in which red and yellow lake and other colors were mixed to tone it down, laid on with Burls’s liberal hand. As the first coat dried, a second, and so on.

Then it was brushed over one night with a substance which we have all eaten t?mes without number. In the morning, Frank’s Old Cuyp, was cracked all over. He was astonished, and well he might be. The surface, hard and dry, was a network of very thin cracks. It was put into a real old frame of the period, the door-mat shaken over canvas and frame several days in succession, and the business was complete. The picture looked old and mellow ; the cracks boro witness to its genuineness ; it had been lined to keep the rotting canvas from dropping to pieces as it stood ; but the frame was the one it had always hung in, in the old manor-house at Compton Green. “It’s a simple thing when you know how to do it, ain’t it ?” asked Mr. Binds of Frank. > “ It is, indeed,” said the artist, astonished at his own work in its altered guise. It is simple.” But what that simple thing is I must not tel], or I shall have some of my younger readers trying the experiment of cracking their fathers’ pictures ; and it wants some practice to ensure success in making the cracks natural in appearance, and not having too many of them.

Frank set to work to malco more of these imitations.

He made them to order, not being a party to any deception which his employer might practise. A copy, or an imitation, whichever Mr. Burls wanted. What the dealer chose to do with it when the order was executed, was nothing to Frank. At the same time he had a shrewd suspicion, though Burls said nothing, that his pictures were sold as originals. It must bo stated that Burls did not always sell a copy as an original. The imitations brought Frank ten pounds each; but they lost him his employment. In this way.

One day, as he was going out to his tea, when he got as far as the staircase that connected the gallery with the shop, he observed Burls showing some pictures to two customers; one of these was his Old Cuyp. “ Compton Green. I assure you, they all came from,” Burls was saying. “ Near Market Basing ?” asked a clerical old gentleman, who was one of his two customers. “ That’s the place, sir. I fetched ’em all away myself, I assure you.” “ But there is nobody there who ever had any pictures. I live near the village myself.” Here was a facer for the dealer. He saw Frank, and called him. Frank had given him the name. Frank must get him out of the scrape. “ Here Shipley”—he winked hard—“ you went down with me to fetch these pictures. Tell this gentleman the house we got ’em from. It’s a genuine Cuyp as ever I sold, sir,” — Frank was coming up the shop, and the old gentleman’s back was turned towards him—- “ and it’s a cheap picture at sixty guineas. I would not take pounds for it.” By this time Frank was close to him.

_ “ Tell this gentleman where we got these pictures from, every one of them. You went with me.”

Burls made a great mistake in his man. Frank was not going to tell lies for him. Besides, he knew the customer. _ The old gentleman turned round, and saw him before he could escape. He fell back a step or two, shaded his eyes with his hand, looked very hard at Frank, then exclaimed, cordially holding out his hand—- “ God bless me i Young Mr. Melliship ?” “Dr. Perkins!” stammered Frank. “ My dear young gentleman, who ever would have thought of seeing you here ?” Frank was interrupted in a rambling apology by Mr. Burls. “Very clever young man—invaluable to me. He’ll tell you”—here he winked again at Frank —“ all about the place we fetched them from.” “Well, I shall have some other things to talk about with him of more importance ; but perhaps he will excuse me if, to settle this, I ask where possibly at Compton Green there could be pictures without me knowing it ?” “Ah !” said Burls, “he can tell you. Igo into so many houses, I forget where they are almost.”

“ Nowhere,” said Frank, looking Dr. Perkins—whom he knew was an old friend of his father’s—full in the face. “ I painted it myself.”

And he was gone out of the shop. It was in vain the old clergyman and his son-in-law tried to overtake him. They soon lost sight of him in the crowded street.