scarcely bring ourselves to regret the sums that were lavished on
Flemish and Italian masterpieces, sums that might have kept our Barrys
and Haydons from bankruptcy.

In January 1824 Haydon left his lodgings, and took the lease of a
house in Connaught Terrace, for which he paid, or promised to pay, a
hundred and twenty pounds a year, a heavy rent for a recently
insolvent artist. Fortunately, he acquired with the house a landlord
of amazing benevolence, who took pot-boilers in lieu of rent, and
meekly submitted to abuse when nothing else was forthcoming. As soon
as he was fairly settled, Haydon arranged the composition of a large
picture of 'Pharaoh dismissing Moses,' upon which he worked in the
intervals of portrait-painting. A curious and obviously impartial
sketch of him, as he appeared at this time, is drawn by Borrow in his
_Lavengro_. The hero's elder brother comes up to town, it may be
remembered, to commission a certain heroic artist to paint an heroic
picture of a very unheroic mayor of Norwich. The two brothers go
together to the painter of Lazarus, and have some difficulty in
obtaining admission to his studio, being mistaken by the servant for
duns. They found a man of about thirty-five, with a clever,
intelligent countenance, sharp grey eyes, and hair cut _a la_
Raphael. He possessed, moreover, a broad chest, and would have been a
very fine figure if his legs had not been too short. He was then
engaged upon his Moses, whose legs, in Lavengro's opinion, were also
too short. His eyes glistened at the mention of a hundred pounds for
the mayor's portrait, and he admitted that he was confoundedly short
of money. The painter was anxious that Lavengro should sit to him for
his Plutarch, which honour that gentleman firmly declined. Years
afterwards he saw the portrait of the mayor, a 'mighty portly man,
with a bull's head, black hair, a body like a dray horse, and legs and