have condescended to resume the paternal arts to which you were first
bred--long stitches, ha, Dick?"

He repelled this unlucky conjecture with a frown and a pshaw, indicative
of indignant contempt, and leading me into another room, showed me,
resting against the wall, the majestic head of Sir William Wallace, grim
as when severed from the trunk by the orders of the Edward.

The painting was executed on boards of a substantial thickness, and
the top decorated with irons, for suspending the honoured effigy upon a
signpost.

"There," he said, "my friend, stands the honour of Scotland, and my
shame; yet not so--rather the shame of those who, instead of encouraging
art in its proper sphere, reduce it to these unbecoming and unworthy
extremities."

I endeavoured to smooth the ruffled feelings of my misused and indignant
friend. I reminded him that he ought not, like the stag in the fable, to
despise the quality which had extricated him from difficulties, in
which his talents, as a portrait or landscape painter, had been found
unavailing. Above all, I praised the execution, as well as conception,
of his painting, and reminded him that, far from feeling dishonoured by
so superb a specimen of his talents being exposed to the general view
of the public, he ought rather to congratulate himself upon the
augmentation of his celebrity to which its public exhibition must
necessarily give rise.

"You are right, my friend--you are right," replied poor Dick, his eye
kindling with enthusiasm; "why should I shun the name of an--an--(he