"it is indeed a kindness to give me a second sitting."

"Tusk, boy!" answered Wolfe, "all men have their vain points, and I
own that I am not ill pleased that these rugged features should be
assigned, even in fancy, to one of the noblest of those men who judged
the mightiest cause in which a country was ever plaintiff, a tyrant
criminal, and a world witness!" While Wolfe was yet speaking his
countenance, so naturally harsh, took a yet sterner aspect, and the
artist, by a happy touch, succeeded in transferring it to the canvas.

"But, after all," continued Wolfe, "it shames me to lend aid to an art
frivolous in itself, and almost culpable in times when Freedom wants
the head to design, and perhaps the hand to execute, far other and
nobler works than the blazoning of her past deeds upon perishable
canvas."

A momentary anger at the slight put upon his art crossed the pale brow
of the artist; but he remembered the character of the man and
continued his work in silence. "You consider then, sir, that these
are times in which liberty is attacked?" said Clarence.

"Attacked!" repeated Wolfe,--" attacked!" and then suddenly sinking
his voice into a sort of sneer, "why, since the event which this
painting is designed to commemorate, I know not if we have ever had
one solitary gleam of liberty break along the great chaos of jarring
prejudice and barbarous law which we term forsooth a glorious
constitution. Liberty attacked! no, boy; but it is a time when
liberty may be gained."

Perfectly unacquainted with the excited politics of the day, or the