given a trifle, believing them to be
near starvation; and I found them roasting a brace of partridges--or was
it quails? for they were waistcoated with bacon,--and I had the charity
to hope they had _not_ stolen them! Anyhow, I never called there again.
And, while I am in Seven Dials, let me record another useful small
experience. There was a lapidary handy, who had at times cut my
beach-found choanites for me. One day I found him making scarabaei out of
bits of agate and lapis lazuli. "Who gave you an order for these," said
I. "Well, sir, I don't rightly know his name; but he was a furriner."
"Was the name Signor----?" "That's it, sir." Then I set off straight to
Sotheby's where I knew the Signor's Egyptian antiquities were soon to be
sold, and duly forewarned the auctioneer of these forgeries. I need not
detail how at the sale he put buyers on their guard, exposing the fraud,
and condemning the peccant scarabaei to extinction. I wonder how many
Grecian bronzes and copper Buddhas have been cast in Birmingham!

* * * * *

Yet another old friend for many years, so far literary in that he was a
sculptor, is to be recorded in Joseph Durham: it was he who, more than
thirty years ago, modelled in life and made in marble after death my
beautiful three-year old daughter, little Alice, epitaphed in my poems.
Of Durham's nobleness of character I can here give a charming trait. I
used to go about once a week--sometimes less often--to Alfred Place to
see how Durham was getting on with the statue (a sleeping infant), and
one day, to my astonishment, I perceived that instead of any progress
having been made in the work, it had, miraculously to me, retrograded;
not half so near completion as it was last week. As I was wondering and
perhaps not well pleased, Durham said, "I had hoped you would not call,
till I had made it look as it did last week,--and then you needn't have
known it." "Known what, friend?" "Well, only this; I came to a stain in
the marble, and as I resolved you should have everything of the best,--I
took another block, and have worked at it night and day, in hopes you
wouldn't find me out. There's the other figure, under that cloth." Now,
considering that the new block involved a cost of some twenty
pounds,--and that the old one might have been artificially doctored, and
that anyhow the risk and loss were equitably as much, mine as his,--and
further that the young sculptor had little mo