I go to all the Modern Exhibitions every season, and of course I
revere the Royal Academy. I stand by its forty Academical articles
almost as firmly as I stand by the thirty-nine Articles of the
Church of England. I am convinced that in neither case could there
be, by any rightful possibility, one article more or less.

It is now exactly three years - three years ago, this very month -
since I went from Westminster to the Temple, one Thursday
afternoon, in a cheap steamboat. The sky was black, when I
imprudently walked on board. It began to thunder and lighten
immediately afterwards, and the rain poured down in torrents. The
deck seeming to smoke with the wet, I went below; but so many
passengers were there, smoking too, that I came up again, and
buttoning my pea-coat, and standing in the shadow of the paddle-
box, stood as upright as I could, and made the best of it.

It was at this moment that I first beheld the terrible Being, who
is the subject of my present recollections.

Standing against the funnel, apparently with the intention of
drying himself by the heat as fast as he got wet, was a shabby man
in threadbare black, and with his hands in his pockets, who
fascinated me from the memorable instant when I caught his eye.

Where had I caught that eye before? Who was he? Why did I connect
him, all at once, with the Vicar of Wakefield, Alfred the Great,
Gil Blas, Charles the Second, Joseph and his Brethren, the Fairy
Queen, Tom Jones, the Decameron of Boccaccio, Tam O'Shanter, the
Marriage of the Doge of Venice with the Adriatic, and the Great
Plague of London? Why, when he bent one leg, and placed one hand