NATURE AND ART.



CHAPTER I.



At a time when the nobility of Britain were said, by the poet
laureate, to be the admirers and protectors of the arts, and were
acknowledged by the whole nation to be the patrons of music--William
and Henry, youths under twenty years of age, brothers, and the sons
of a country shopkeeper who had lately died insolvent, set out on
foot for London, in the hope of procuring by their industry a scanty
subsistence.

As they walked out of their native town, each with a small bundle at
his back, each observed the other drop several tears: but, upon the
sudden meeting of their eyes, they both smiled with a degree of
disdain at the weakness in which they had been caught.

"I am sure," said William (the elder), "I don't know what makes me
cry."

"Nor I neither," said Henry; "for though we may never see this town
again, yet we leave nothing behind us to give us reason to lament."

"No," replied William, "nor anybody who cares what becomes of us."

"But I was thinking," said Henry, now weeping bitterly, "that, if my