ust have been thrown in
for nothing; and West's brawny Lear tearing his clothes to pieces. But
why go on with the catalogue, when most of these pictures can be seen
either at the Athenaeum building in Beacon Street or at the Art Gallery,
and admired or criticised perhaps more justly, certainly not more
generously, than in those earlier years when we looked at them through
the japanned fish-horns?

If one happened to pass through Atkinson Street on his way to the
Athenaeum, he would notice a large, square, painted, brick house, in
which lived a leading representative of old-fashioned coleopterous
Calvinism, and from which emerged one of the liveliest of literary
butterflies. The father was editor of the "Boston Recorder," a very
respectable, but very far from amusing paper, most largely patronized by
that class of the community which spoke habitually of the first day of
the week as "the Sahbuth." The son was the editor of several different
periodicals in succession, none of them over severe or serious, and of
many pleasant books, filled with lively descriptions of society, which
he studied on the outside with a quick eye for form and color, and with
a certain amount of sentiment, not very deep, but real, though somewhat
frothed over by his worldly experiences.

Nathaniel Parker Willis was in full bloom when I opened my first
Portfolio. He had made himself known by his religious poetry, published
in his father's paper, I think, and signed "Roy." He had started the
"American Magazine," afterwards merged in the "New York Mirror." He had
then left off writing scripture pieces, and taken to lighter forms of
verse. He had just written

"I'm twenty-two, I'm twenty-two,
They idly give me joy,
As if I should be glad to know
That I was less a boy."

He was young, therefore, and already famous. He came very near being
very handsome. He was tall; his hair, of light brown color, waved in
luxuriant abundance; his cheek was as rosy as if it had been painted to
show behind the footlights; he dressed with artistic elegance. He was
something between a remembrance of Count D'Orsay and an anticipation of
Oscar Wilde. There used to be in the gallery of the Luxembourg a picture
of Hippolytus and Phxdra, in which the beautiful young man, who had
kindled a passion in the heart of his wicked step-mother, always
reminded me of Willis, in spite of the shortcomings of the living face
as compared with the ideal. The p