I SAID I'D GROW IT, AND I'VE GROWN IT, AND IT SHALL HAUNT YOU!'

He may have tumbled down-stairs in the dark, but he never walked
down or ran down. I looked over the banisters, and I was alone
with the thunder.

Need I add more of my terrific fate? IT HAS haunted me ever since.
It glares upon me from the walls of the Royal Academy, (except when
MACLISE subdues it to his genius,) it fills my soul with terror at
the British Institution, it lures young artists on to their
destruction. Go where I will, the Ghost of Art, eternally working
the passions in hair, and expressing everything by beard, pursues
me. The prediction is accomplished, and the victim has no rest.



OUT OF TOWN



SITTING, on a bright September morning, among my books and papers
at my open window on the cliff overhanging the sea-beach, I have
the sky and ocean framed before me like a beautiful picture. A
beautiful picture, but with such movement in it, such changes of
light upon the sails of ships and wake of steamboats, such dazzling
gleams of silver far out at sea, such fresh touches on the crisp
wave-tops as they break and roll towards me - a picture with such
music in the billowy rush upon the shingle, the blowing of morning
wind through the corn-sheaves where the farmers' waggons are busy,
the singing of the larks, and the distant voices of children at