art.  A creature more unsullied by the world it is impossible to conceive, and I often thought it a flaw in his artistic character that he had not a harmless vice or two.  It amused me greatly at times to think that he was of our shrewd Yankee race; but, after all, there could be no better token of his American origin than this high aesthetic fever.  The very heat of his devotion was a sign of conversion; those born to European opportunity manage better to reconcile enthusiasm with comfort.  He had, moreover, all our native mistrust for intellectual discretion, and our native relish for sonorous superlatives.  As a critic he was very much more generous than just, and his mildest terms of approbation were “stupendous,” “transcendent,” and “incomparable.”  The small change of admiration seemed to him no coin for a gentleman to handle; and yet, frank as he was intellectually, he was personally altogether a mystery.  His professions, somehow, were all half-professions, and his allusions to his work and circumstances left something dimly ambiguous in the background.  He was modest and proud, and never spoke of his domestic matters.  He was evidently poor; yet he must have had some slender independence, since he could afford to make so merry over the fact that his culture of ideal beauty had never brought him a penny.  His poverty, I supposed, was his motive for neither inviting me to his lodging nor mentioning its whereabouts.  We met either in some public place or at my hotel, where I entertained him as freely as I might without appearing to be prompted by charity.  He seemed always hungry, and this was his nearest approach to human grossness.  I made a point of asking no impertinent questions, but, each time we met, I ventured to make some respectful allusion to the magnum opus, to inquire, as it were, as to its health and progress.  “We are getting on, with the Lord’s help,” he would say, with a grave smile.  “We are doing well.  You see, I have the grand advantage that I lose no time.  These hours I spend with you are pure profit.  They are suggestive!  Just as the truly religious soul is always at worship, the genuine artist is always in labour.  He takes his property wherever he finds it, and learns some precious secret from every object that stands up in the light.  If you but knew the rapture of observation!  I gather with every glance some hint for light, for colour, or relief!  When I get home, I pour out my treasures into the lap of toy Madonna.  Oh, I am not idle! Nulla dies sine linea.”

I was introduced in Florence to an American lady whose drawing-room had long formed an attractive place of reunion for the foreign residents.  She lived on a fourth floor, and she was not rich; but she offered her visitors very good tea, little cakes at option, and conversation not quite to match.  Her conversation had mainly an aesthetic flavour, for Mrs. Coventry was famously “artistic.”  Her apartment