sir; he draws
on his imagination for his figures. He scorns to copy from a model. I
convey the impression of mystery that Naychure gives me; I am no servile
copyist. And I claim to leave an impression on the minds of the
beholders of my works. Why, even Caper, I believe, can see what I wish
to tell, and read my poems on canvas. Tell me, Caper, what idea does
even that rough sketch of Venice awake in your imaginative faculties,
and all that?'

Caper's face wore a deeply thoughtful look, as he answered: 'I do see
it; I do claim to read the lesson you would teach----'

'Speak it out,' interrupted Phlamm, 'I knew you would feel the deep,
mysterious sentiment as is in it.'

'Spider-tracks and crows' feet on the blue mud of a big marsh,' spoke
Caper resolutely.

'Pshaw!' exclaimed Phlamm impetuously; 'you have no Faith, and without
that, all Art is a sealed thing. Goldburg, to whom I lately sold a
painting, had faith; he saw the grand idea which I explained to him in
that picture; he knew that the Earl of Bigbarns had purchased a work of
mine, and he said to me: 'The opinion of such a man is an opinion as
should be a valuable opinion to a business man, and govern the
sentiments of those who worship Art.' Other artists see Naychure, but
_how_ do they see her? I answer, blindly! They don't feel her here!'
(Phlamm struck his waistcoat in fearful proximity to a pocket in it, and
altogether too low for his heart.)

'Nay-chure,' said Caper to Rocjean, as they left this studio of the
mysterious one, 'ruined a good Barnum to make a poor Phlamm, when she
made him.'

A BATH-HUNT.

It is a mournful sight to see a city of one hundred and eighty thousand
five hundred and thirty-nine inhabitants, including one thousand three
hundred and thirty-one priests, two thousand four hundred and four
monks, and eight hundred and fifty-four Jews, Turks, and heretics, as
the census had it, attacked with hydrophobia. But it is so. A
preternatural dread of water rages among all the inhabitants of Rome,
from the untitled down to the titled.

'Madame,' said Rocjean to a distinguished female model, 'I assure you
that, in the sixth century, [or as Sir Gardiner Wilkinson has it, in the
five hundred,] there were nine thousand and twenty-five baths in this
city.'

'Those must have been good times,' replied she, 'for the washerwomen,
_seguro!_ There are a good many clothes of the _forestieri_ [strangers]
washed here now; but not so many differen