b," which was speedily bankrupt (for we are
too far from the centre of town to support a club of our own); it was
subsequently hired by the West Diddlesex Railroad; and is now divided
into sets of chambers, superintended by an acrimonious housekeeper, and
by a porter in a sham livery: whom, if you don't find him at the door,
you may as well seek at the "Grapes" public-house, in the little lane
round the corner. He varnishes the japan-boots of the dandy lodgers;
reads Mr. Pinkney's Morning Post before he lets him have it; and
neglects the letters of the inmates of the chambers generally.

The great rooms, which were occupied as the salons of the noble Levant,
the coffee-rooms of the "Pococurante" (a club where the play was
furious, as I am told), and the board-room and manager's-room of the
West Diddlesex, are tenanted now by a couple of artists: young Pinkney
the miniaturist, and George Rumbold the historical painter. Miss
Rumbold, his sister lives with him, by the way; but with that young lady
of course we have nothing to do.

I knew both these gentlemen at Rome, where George wore a velvet doublet
and a beard down to his chest, and used to talk about high art at the
"Caffe Greco." How it smelled of smoke, that velveteen doublet of his,
with which his stringy red beard was likewise perfumed! It was in his
studio that I had the honor to be introduced to his sister, the fair
Miss Clara: she had a large casque with a red horse-hair plume (I
thought it had been a wisp of her brother's beard at first), and held a
tin-headed spear in her hand, representing a Roman warrior in the great
picture of "Caractacus" George was painting--a piece sixty-four feet by
eighteen. The Roman warrior blushed to be discovered in that attitude:
the tin-headed spear trembled in the whitest arm in the world. So she
put it down, and taking off the helmet also, went and sat in a far
corner of the studio, mending George's stockings; whilst we smoked a
couple of pipes, and talked about Raphael being a good deal overrated.

I think he is; and have never disguised my opinion about the
"Transfiguration.". And all the time we talked, there were Clara's
eyes looking lucidly out from the dark corner in which she was sitting,
working away at the stockings. The lucky fellow! They were in a dreadful
state of bad repair when she came out to him at Rome, after the death of
their father, the Reverend Miles Rumbold.

George, while at Rome, painted "Caractacus;"