e, however, he sits still, keeps his own
counsel, and makes himself agreeable enough all the evening, like a
good-natured kind-hearted little man, as he is. Whereby he is repaid;
for the conversation soon becomes deep, and even too deep for him; and
he is fain to drop out of the race, and leave it to his idol and to
the new-comer, who seems to have seen, and done, and read everything
in heaven and earth, and probably bought everything also; not to
mention that he would be happy to sell the said universe again, at a
very cheap price, if any one would kindly take it off his hands. Not
that he boasts, or takes any undue share of the conversation; he
is evidently too well bred for that; but every sentence shows an
acquaintance with facts of which Eton has told Scoutbush nothing, the
barrack-room less, and after which he still craves, the good little
fellow, in a very honest way, and would soon have learnt, had he had a
chance; for of native Irish smartness he had no lack.

"Poor Flake was half mad about you, Signora, in the stage-box
to-night," said Sabina. "He says that he shall not sleep till he has
painted you."

"Do let him!" cried Scoutbush: "what a picture he will make!"

"He may paint a picture, but not me; it is quite enough, Lord
Scoutbush, to be some one else for two hours every night, without
going down to posterity, as some one else for ever. If I am painted, I
will be painted by no one who cannot represent my very self."

"You are right!" said Stangrave: "and you will do the man himself good
by refusing; he has some notion still of what a portrait ought to be.
If he once begins by attempting passing expressions of passion, which
is all stage portraits can give, he will find them so much easier than
honest representations of character, that he will end, where all our
moderns seem to do, in merest melodrama."

"Explain!" said she.

"Portrait painters now depend for their effect on the mere accidents
of the _entourage_; on dress, on landscape, even on broad hints of a
man's occupation, putting a plan on the engineer's table, and a roll
in the statesman's hands, like the old Greek who wrote 'this is an ox'
under his picture. If they wish to give the face expression, though
they seldom aim so high, all they can compass is a passing emotion;
and one sitter goes down to posterity with an eternal frown, another
with an eternal smile."

"Or, if he be a poet," said Sabina, "rolls his eye for ever in a fine
frenz