of art amateurs, connoisseurs, and the body who are
regarded in the artistic world with far greater reverence--the noted
picture buyers and dealers, have come and seen, and gone away again;
after having lavishly expended their approbation or disapprobation,
and possibly in a less liberal degree, their cash. After the first
week or so, the galleries begin to clear of gentlemen of the class in
question; even artists have got tired of coming to see their own
pictures, particularly if they be not well hung; and so the exhibition
is generally handed over during the greater part of its duration to
the languid _far niente_ elegant crowd we have seen thronging its
corridors. The grand day for the moneyed amateurs, who come to
increase their collections, is, however, that of the private view.
This generally occurs on a Saturday, and the public is admitted on the
following Monday. Within an hour of the opening on the former day, the
rooms are crowded with a multitude of notabilities. You see that you
are in a special class of society, or rather, in two special
classes--literary and artistic on the one hand; wealthy and socially
elevated on the other. The fact is evident in the general mutual
acquaintanceship which prevails, principally within each respective
circle, but by no means exclusively so. First, you are sure to observe
a cluster of those peers and members of parliament who busy themselves
most in social, literary, and artistic questions. Bishops, too, are
regular private-view men; capital judges, moreover, and liberal
buyers; and we seldom miss catching a glimpse of some dozen faces,
whose proprietors are men standing at the very top of our historic,
philosophic, and critical literature, and who move smilingly about,
amid the keen but concealed inspection of the crowd, who pass their
names in whispers from group to group.

But the class of regular picture-buyers is quite _sui generis_. You
may pitch upon your man in a moment. Ten to one, he is old, and has
all the shrivelled, high-dried appearance of the most far-gone and
confirmed bachelorism. Everything about him looks old and
old-fashioned. His hair is thin and gray, and he shuffles along on a
couple of poor old shanks, which will never look any stouter unless it
be under the influence of a fit of the gout. He wears a white
neckcloth, arranged with the celebrated wisp-tie--shoes a great deal
too big for him--and to his keen, twinkling eyes he applies a pair of
heavy