did credit to the youthful master's abilities as a workman-like
maker of Claudes.

I have been informed that, since the time of which I am writing,
the business of gentlemen of Mr. Pickup's class has rather fallen

off, and that there are dealers in pictures, nowadays, who are as
just and honorable men as can be found in any profession or

calling, anywhere under the sun. This change, which I report with
sincerity and reflect on with amazement, is, as I suspect, mainly

the result of certain wholesale modern improvements in the
position of contemporary Art, which have necessitated

improvements and alterations in the business of picture-dealing.
In my time, the encouragers of modern painting were limited in

number to a few noblemen and gentlemen of ancient lineage, who,
in matters of taste, at least, never presumed to think for

themselves. They either inherited or bought a gallery more or
less full of old pictures. It was as much a part of their

education to put their faith in these on hearsay evidence, as to
put their faith in King, Lords and Commons. It was an article of

their creed to believe that the dead painters were the great men,
and that the more the living painters imitated the dead, the

better was their chance of becoming at some future day, and in a
minor degree, great also. At certain times and seasons, these

noblemen and gentlemen self-distrustfully strayed into the
painting-room of a modern artist, self-distrustfully allowed

themselves to be rather attracted by his pictures,
self-distrustfully bought one or two of them at prices which

would appear so incredibly low, in these days, that I really
cannot venture to quote them. The picture was sent home; the

nobleman or gentleman (almost always an amiable and a hospitable
man) would ask the artist to his house and introduce him to the

distinguished individuals who frequented it; but would never
admit his picture, on terms of equality, into the society even of

the second-rate Old Masters. His work was hung up in any
out-of-the-way corner of the gallery that could be found; it had

been bought under protest; it was admitted by sufferance; its
freshness and brightness damaged it terribly by contrast with the

dirtiness and the dinginess of its elderly predecessors; and its
only points selected for praise were those in which it most

nearly resembled the peculiar mannerism of some Old Master, not
those in which it resembled the characteristics of the old

mistress--Nature.
The unfortunate artist had no court of appeal that he could turn

to. Nobody beneath the nobleman, or the gentleman of ancient
lineage, so much as thought of buying a modern picture. Nobody

dared to whisper that the Art of painting had in anywise been
improved or worthily enlarged in its sphere by any modern

professors. For one nobleman who was ready to buy one genuine
modern picture at a small price, there were twenty noblemen ready

to buy twenty more than doubtful old pictures at great prices.
The consequence was, that some of the most famous artists of the

English school, whose pictures are now bought at auction sales
for fabulous sums, were then hardly able to make an income. They

were a scrupulously patient and conscientious body of men, who
would as soon have thought of breaking into a house, or

equalizing the distribution of wealth, on the highway, by the
simple machinery of a horse and pistol, as of making Old Masters

to order. They sat resignedly in their lonely studios, surrounded
by unsold pictures which have since been covered again and again

with gold and bank-notes by eager buyers at auctions and
show-rooms, whose money has gone into other than the painter's

pockets---who have never dreamed that the painter had the
smallest moral right to a farthing of it. Year after year, these

martyrs of the brush stood, palette in hand, fighting the old
battle of individual merit against contemporary

dullness--fighting bravely, patiently, independently; and leaving
to Mr. Pickup and his pupils a complete monopoly of all the

profit which could be extracted, in their line of business, from
the feebly-buttoned pocket of the patron, and the inexhaustible

credulity of the connoisseur.
Now all this is changed. Traders and makers of all kinds of

commodities have effected a revolution in the picture-world,
never dreamed of by the noblemen and gentlemen of ancient

lineage, and consistently protested against to this day by the
very few of them who still remain alive.

The daring innovators started with the new notion of buying a
picture which they themselves could admire and appreciate, and

for the genuineness of which the artist was still living to
vouch. These rough and ready customers were not to be led by

rules or frightened by precedents; they were not to be easily
imposed upon, for the article they wanted was not to be easily

counterfeited. Sturdily holding to their own opinions, they
thought incessant repetitions of Saints, Martyrs, and Holy

Families, monotonous and uninteresting--and said so. They thought
little pictures of ugly Dutch women scouring pots, and drunken

Dutchmen playing cards, dirty and dear at the price--and said so.
They saw that trees were green in nature, and brown in the Old

Masters, and they thought the latter color not an improvement on
the former--and said so. They wanted interesting subjects;

variety, resemblance to nature; genuineness of the article, and
fresh paint; they had no ancestors whose feelings, as founders of

galleries, it was necessary to consult; no critical gentlemen and
writers of valuable works to snub them when they were in spirits;

nothing to lead them by the nose but their own shrewdness, their
own interests, and their own tastes--so they turned their backs

valiantly on the Old Masters, and marched off in a body to the
living men.

From that time good modern pictures have risen in the scale. Even
as articles of commerce and safe investments for money, they have

now (as some disinterested collectors who dine at certain annual
dinners I know of, can testify) distanced the old pictures in the

race. The modern painters who have survived the brunt of the
battle, have lived to see pictures for which they once asked

hundreds, selling for thousands, and the young generation making
incomes by the brush in one year, which it would have cost the

old heroes of the easel ten to accumulate. The posterity of Mr.
Pickup still do a tolerable stroke of business (making bright

modern masters for the market which is glutted with the dingy old
material), and will, probably, continue to thrive and multiply in

the future: the one venerableinstitution of this world which we
can safely count upon as likely to last, being the institution of

human folly. Nevertheless, if a wise man of the reformed taste
wants a modern picture, there are places for him to go to now

where he may be sure of getting it genuine; where, if the artist
is not alive to vouch for his work, the facts at any rate have

not had time to die which vouch for the dealer who sells it. In
my time matters were rather different. The painters _we_ throve

by had died long enough ago for pedigrees to get confused, and
identities disputable; and if I had been desirous of really

purchasing a genuine Old Master for myself--speaking as a
practical man--I don't know where I should have gone to ask for

one, or whose judgment I could have safely relied on to guard me
from being cheated, before I bought it.

We are stopping a long time in the picture-gallery, you will say.
I am very sorry--but we must stay a little longer, for the sake

of a living picture, the gem of the collection.
I was still admiring Mr. Pickup's Old Masters, when a dirty

little boy opened the door of the gallery, and introduced a young
lady.

My heart--fancy my having a heart!--gave one great bound in me. I
recognized the charming person whom I had followed in the street.

Her veil was not down this time. All the beauty of her large,
soft, melancholy, brown eyes beamed on me. Her delicate

complexion became suddenly suffused with a lovely rosy flush. Her
glorious black hair--no! I will make an effort, I will suppress