n it, the best portrait, and the best
scene of homely life, to be found in the building. Don't think it a part
of my despondency about public affairs, and my fear that our national
glory is on the decline, when I say that mere form and conventionalities
usurp, in English art, as in English government and social relations,
the place of living force and truth. I tried to resist the impression
yesterday, and went to the English gallery first, and praised and
admired with great diligence; but it was of no use. I could not make
anything better of it than what I tell you. Of course this is between
ourselves. Friendship is better than criticism, and I shall steadily
hold my tongue. Discussion is worse than useless when you cannot agree
about what you are going to discuss." French nature is all wrong, said
the English artists whom Dickens talked to; but surely not because it is
French, was his reply. The English point of view is not the only one to
take men and women from. The French pictures are "theatrical," was the
rejoinder. But the French themselves are a demonstrative and
gesticulating people, was Dickens's retort; and what thus is rendered by
their artists is the truth through an immense part of the world. "I
never saw anything so strange. They seem to me to have got a fixed idea
that there is no natural manner but the English manner (in itself so
exceptional that it is a thing apart, in all countries); and that unless
a Frenchman--represented as going to the guillotine for example--is as
calm as Clapham, or as respectable as Richmond-hill, he cannot be
right."

To the sittings at Ary Scheffer's some troubles as well as many
pleasures were incident, and both had mention in his letters. "You may
faintly imagine what I have suffered from sitting to Scheffer every day
since I came back. He is a most noble fellow, and I have the greatest
pleasure in his society, and have made all sorts of acquaintances at his
house; but I can scarcely express how uneasy and unsettled it makes me
to have to sit, sit, sit, with _Little Dorrit_ on my mind, and the
Christmas business too--though that is now happily dismissed. On Monday
afternoon, _and all day on Wednesday_, I am going to sit again. And the
crowning feature is, that I do not discern the slightest resemblance,
either in his portrait or his brother's! They both peg away at me at the
same time." The sittings were varied by a special entertainment, when
Scheffer received some sixty p