cuts. Thus--

On Vivid's return home, his gratification was soon diminished by
the recollections of "existing circumstances," and these caused him
to sink into a gloomy and desponding state; when Sam Alltact, rather
_malapropos_, entered with a black-edged card, inviting his master
to the funeral of a deceased acquaintance, an eminent young artist,
named Gilmaurs, who, never having been an R.A., but simply an engraver
of extraordinary genius, was not to be buried under the dome of St.
Paul's, but in a village churchyard.

[Illustration: THE HANGING COMMITTEE.]

Vivid could not help remarking to a brother mourner, that, in his
opinion, the profession of a painter was as much overrated as that of an
engraver was underrated: "for," he added, "what real and unprejudiced
connoisseur, while contemplating Woollett's Roman Edifices from Claude,
and Sir Robert Strange's Titian's Mistress from Titian, with many
others, would not acknowledge, that the copy in many instances so
rivalled, if not surpassed, the original, that it became a decided
question, which artist ought to carry off the palm?"

"Or, at any rate," cried an odd accordant theatrical companion, "the
connoisseur might say, with Shakspeare--

'Which is the merchant here, and which the Jew?'"


"There is no doubt, that in any school of painting," continued our hero,
"such men as Reynolds, West, and Lawrence, cannot be too much upheld