rrassing
questions as these.

Thus much for the history of the painter's past life. We may now make
his acquaintance in the appropriate atmosphere of his own Studio.

CHAPTER II. MR. BLYTH IN HIS STUDIO.

It was wintry weather--not such a November winter's day as some of us
may remember looking at fourteen years ago, in Baregrove Square, but a
brisk frosty morning in January. The country view visible from the back
windows of Mr. Blyth's house, which stood on the extreme limit of the
new suburb, was thinly and brightly dressed out for the sun's morning
levee, in its finest raiment of pure snow. The cold blue sky was
cloudless; every sound out of doors fell on the ear with a hearty and
jocund ring; all newly-lit fires burnt up brightly and willingly without
coaxing; and the robin-redbreasts hopped about expectantly on balconies
and windowsills, as if they only waited for an invitation to walk in
and warm themselves, along with their larger fellow creatures, round the
kindly hearth.

The Studio was a large and lofty room, lighted by a skylight, and
running along the side of the house throughout its whole depth. Its
walls were covered with plain brown paper, and its floor was only
carpeted in the middle. The most prominent pieces of furniture were two
large easels placed at either extremity of the room; each supporting a
picture of considerable size, covered over for the present with a
pair of sheets which looked woefully in want of washing. There was a
painting-stand with quantities of shallow little drawers, some too full
to open, others, again, too full to shut; there was a movable platform
to put sitters on, covered with red cloth much disguised in dust;
there was a small square table of new deal, and a large round table
of dilapidated rosewood, both laden with sketch-books, portfolios,
dog's-eared sheets of drawing paper, tin pots, scattered brushes,
palette-knives, rags variously defiled by paint and oil, pencils,
chalks, port-crayons--the whole smelling powerfully at all points of
turpentine.

Finally, there were chairs in plenty, no one of which, however, at all
resembled the other. In one corner stood a moldy antique chair with a
high back, and a basin of dirty water on the seat. By the side of the
fireplace a cheap straw chair of the beehive pattern was tilted over
against a dining-room chair, with a horse-hair cushion. Before the
largest of the two pictures, and hard by a portable flight of steps,