A Murillo beggar is not more precious than sight of London in any of the
streets admitting coloured cloud-scenes; the cunning of the sun's hand so
speaks to us. And if haply down an alley some olive mechanic of street-
organs has quickened little children's legs to rhythmic footing, they
strike on thoughts braver than pastoral. Victor Radnor, lover of the
country though he was, would have been the first to say it. He would
indeed have said it too emphatically. Open London as a theme, to a
citizen of London ardent for the clear air out of it, you have roused an
orator; you have certainly fired a magazine, and must listen to his
reminiscences of one of its paragraphs or pages.

The figures of the hurtled fair ones in sky were wreathing Nelson's
cocked hat when Victor, distinguishably bright-faced amid a crowd of the
irradiated, emerged from the tideway to cross the square, having thoughts
upon Art, which were due rather to the suggestive proximity of the
National Gallery than to the Flemish mouldings of cloud-forms under
Venetian brushes. His purchases of pictures had been his unhappiest
ventures. He had relied and reposed on the dicta of newspaper critics;
who are sometimes unanimous, and are then taken for guides, and are
fatal. He was led to the conclusion that our modern-lauded pictures
do not ripen. They have a chance of it, if abused. But who thinks of
buying the abused? Exalted by the critics, they have, during the days
of Exhibition, a glow, a significance or a fun, abandoning them where
examination is close and constant, and the critic's trumpet-note
dispersed to the thinness of the fee for his blowing. As to foreign
pictures, classic pictures, Victor had known his purse to leap for a
Raphael with a history in stages of descent from the Master, and critics
to swarm: a Raphael of the dealers, exposed to be condemned by the
critics, universally derided. A real Raphael in your house is
aristocracy to the roof-tree. But the wealthy trader will reach to