the charge of triteness and wearisomeness. The composition was
pyramidal, the apex being a torch borne aloft for the 'high light,'
and the base shewing some very novel effects of herbage and armour.
But it failed. All my skill, all my hope, my ceaseless endeavour, my
burning visions, all--all had failed; and I was only a poor,
half-starved painter, in Great Howland Street, whose landlady was
daily abating in her respect, and the butcher daily abating in his
punctuality; whose garments were getting threadbare, and his dinners
hypothetical, and whose day-dreams of fame and fortune had faded into
the dull-gray of penury and disappointment. I was broken-hearted, ill,
hungry; so I accepted an invitation from a friend, a rich manufacturer
in Birmingham, to go down to his house for the Christmas holidays. He
had a pleasant place in the midst of some ironworks, the blazing
chimneys of which, he assured me, would afford me some exquisite
studies of 'light' effects.

By mistake, I went by the Express train, and so was thrown into the
society of a lady whose position would have rendered any acquaintance
with her impossible, excepting under such chance-conditions as the
present; and whose history, as I learned it afterwards, led me to
reflect much on the difference between the reality and the seeming of
life.

She moved my envy. Yes--base, mean, low, unartistic, degrading as is
this passion, I felt it rise up like a snake in my breast when I saw
that feeble woman. She was splendidly dressed--wrapped in furs of the
most costly kind, trailing behind; her velvets and lace worth a
countess's dowry. She was attended by obsequious menials; surrounded
by luxuries; her compartment of the carriage was a perfect palace in
all the accessories which it was possible to collect in so small a