nce--there's
atmosphere for you--there's air! You can't cut those clouds into slices
of cheese as you can them of that humbug of a Cloud Lowrain. Cloud
Lowrain! he's a purty painter! Naychure is my teacher. I go out
mornings and hear the jackdaws chatter, and see trees and all that;
sometimes I walk around in a garden for ten minutes and commune with
Naychure--that's the way to do it. Look at clouds before you paint
'em--I know it's hard when the sun's in your eyes, but do it--I've spent
a week at a time out-doors, like Wordsworth and the great, the grand,
the colossial Ruzking.'

'I like that water,' said Rocjean, alluding to that of the painting.

'Water is my peculiar study; I am now engaged experimenting on it--see
there!' Here Phlamm pointed to a basin.

'Been washing your hands?' asked Caper.

'Scientifically experimenting, not manually. Water is
soup-or-fish-all--earth is not soup-or-fish-all.'

'Our dinners are, during Lent,' quoth Caper, 'unless we're heretics.'

'I don't understand your frivolity--what do you mean?'

'Didn't you say, 'Soup or all fish?''

'Pshaw! You will never make an artist--never, never--_you_ are too, too
superficiall, too much of the earth, dirty.'

'Oh! now I understand,' answered Caper; 'give it to me, I deserve it.'

'I was studying water, its shadows and its superficiality, in that
basin,' continued Phlamm, 'and I study the ocean there, and have
devolved great principles from it. What makes my pictures sought for by
the high and the low, wealthy? What? It's the Truth in 'em, the Mystery,
the Naychure. The old masters were humbugs, they weren't mysterious,
they had no inner sight into the workings of Naychure. Who'd buy one of
their pictures when he might have a Turner for the same price? Nobody.'

'Wouldn't he?' asked Caper. 'Try him with a Raphael, just a small one.'

'Raphael? You mean Raffaele. Ah! he _was_ a painter, he wasn't one of
the old masters, however, he was a middle-age master. What sweetness,
what a kind of--sweetness generally; what a blending of the prayerful
infant with the enthusiastic beauty; the--the polished chastity of his
Mad-donas; the folds of his drapery, and--the drapery of his folds.
Truly enchanting, and so very uncommonly gentlemanly in his colors.'

'The Chesterfield of oil-colors?' suggested Rocjean. 'But _a propos_ of
Nature, you never paint a picture directly from her, do you?'

'Never! Does a great historical painter use the model? No,