of his enviable leisure is consumed at Christie's, and Phillips's--or
where not, to pick up pictures, and such gauds. On these occasions
he mostly stoppeth me, to read a short lecture on the advantage a
person like me possesses above himself, in having his time occupied
with business which he _must do_--assureth me that he often feels
it hang heavy on his hands--wishes he had fewer holidays--and goes
off--Westward Ho!--chanting a tune, to Pall Mall--perfectly convinced
that he has convinced me--while I proceed in my opposite direction
tuneless.

It is pleasant again to see this Professor of Indifference doing the
honours of his new purchase, when he has fairly housed it. You must
view it in every light, till _he_ has found the best--placing it at
this distance, and at that, but always suiting the focus of your sight
to his own. You must spy at it through your fingers, to catch the
aërial perspective--though you assure him that to you the landscape
shows much more agreeable without that artifice. Wo be to the luckless
wight, who does not only not respond to his rapture, but who should
drop an unseasonable intimation of preferring one of his anterior
bargains to the present!--The last is always his best hit--his
"Cynthia of the minute."--Alas! how many a mild Madonna have I
known to _come in_--a Raphael!--keep its ascendancy for a few brief
moons--then, after certain intermedial degradations, from the front
drawing-room to the back gallery, thence to the dark parlour,--adopted
in turn by each of the Carracci, under successive lowering ascriptions
of filiation, mildly breaking its fall--consigned to the oblivious
lumber-room, _go out_ at last a Lucca Giordano, or plain Carlo
Maratti!--which things when I beheld--musing upon the chances and
mutabilities of fate below, hath made me to reflect upon the altered
condition of great personages, or that woful Queen of Richard the