y felt when they had it on. He has sat on the old chairs and
sofas, and rubbed against the old wainscots, and leaned over the old
balusters. He knows every mended place in Tony Lumpkin's stockings, and
exactly how that ingenuous youth leaned back on the spinet, with his
thick, familiar thumb out, when he presented his inimitable countenance,
with a grin, to Mr. Hastings, after he had set his fond mother
a-whimpering. (There is nothing in the whole series, by-the-way,
better indicated than the exquisitely simple, half-bumpkin, half-vulgar
expression of Tony's countenance and smile in this scene, unless it be
the charming arch yet modest face of Miss Hardcastle, lighted by the
candle she carries, as, still holding the door by which she comes in,
she is challenged by young Mar-low to relieve his bewilderment as to
where he really is and what _she_ really is.) In short, if we have all
seen "She Stoops to Conquer" acted, Mr. Abbey has had the better fortune
of seeing it off the stage; and it is noticeable how happily he has
steered clear of the danger of making his people theatrical types--mere
masqueraders and wearers of properties. This is especially the case with
his women, who have not a hint of the conventional paint and patches,
simpering with their hands in the pockets of aprons, but are taken from
the same originals from which Goldsmith took them.

If it be asked on the occasion of this limited sketch of Mr. Abbey's
powers where, after all, he did learn to draw so perfectly, I know no
answer but to say that he learned it in the school in which he learned
also to paint (as he has been doing in these latest years, rather
tentatively at first, but with greater and greater success)--the school
of his own personal observation. His drawing is the drawing of direct,
immediate, solicitous study of the particular case, without tricks or
affectations or any sort of cheap subterfuge, and nothing can exceed the
charm of its delicacy, accuracy and elegance, its variety and freedom,
its clear, frank solution of difficulties. If for the artist it be the
foundation of every joy to know exactly what he wants (as I hold it
is indeed), Mr. Abbey is, to all appearance, to be constantly
congratulated. And I apprehend that he would not deny that it is a
good-fortune for him to have been able to arrange his life so that his
eye encounters in abundance the particular cases of which I speak. Two
or three years ago, at the Institute of Painter