d them to his second-rate parties; Uncle Barnet was really proud
to visit them in their own home. Sam Winnington was a discerning
mortal; he had a faculty for discovering genius, especially that
work-a-day genius which is in rising men; and he certainly had
bird-lime wherewith he could fix their feet under his hospitable
table. The best of the sages and wits of the day were to be met in Sam
Winnington's house; the best of the sages and wits of the day thought
Clary a fine woman, though a little lofty, and Sam a good fellow, an
honest chum, a delightful companion, and at the same time the prince
of portrait-painters. What an eye he had! what a touch! How much
perception of individual character, and at the same time, what sober
judgment and elegant taste to preserve his sitters, ladies and
gentlemen, as well as men and women! Cavaliers would have it, the
ladies and gentlemen, like Sam's condescension at his wedding-feast,
overtopped the mark; but it was erring on the safe side. Who would not
sink the man in the gentleman? After all, perhaps the sages and wits
were not altogether disinterested: almost every one of them filled Sam
Winnington's famous sitter's chair, and depended on Sam's tasteful
pencil handing down their precious noses and chins to posterity.

Sam and Clary were going abroad, in that coach, which had made Dulcie
Locke look longingly after it, and ponder what it would be for one of
her frail children to have "a ride" on the box as far as Kensington.
They were bound for the house of one of the lordly patrons of arts and
letters. They were bound for my Lord Burlington's, or the Earl of
Mulgrave's, or Sir William Beechey's--for a destination where they were
a couple of mark and distinction, to be received with the utmost
consideration. Sam reared smartly his round but not ill-proportioned
person in his rich brocade coat, and Clary towered in the corner with
her white throat, and her filmy ivory-coloured laces.

We won't see many more distinguished men and women than the members of
the set who frequented the old London tea-parties; and Sam Winnington
and Clary were in it and of it, while Will Locke and Dulcie were
poverty-stricken and alone with their bantlings in the garret in St.
Martin's Lane. What becomes of the doctrine of happiness being equally
divided in this world, as so many comfortable persons love to opine?
Possibly we don't stand up for it; or we may have our loophole, by which
we may let ourselve