y."

"But would you forbid them to paint passion?"

"Not in its place; when the picture gives the causes of the passion,
and the scene tells its own story. But then let us not have merely
Kean as Hamlet, but Hamlet's self; let the painter sit down and
conceive for himself a Hamlet, such as Shakspeare conceived; not
merely give us as much of him as could be pressed at a given moment
into the face of Mr. Kean. He will be only unjust to both actor and
character. If Flake paints Marie as Lady Macbeth, he will give us
neither her nor Lady Macbeth; but only the single point at which their
two characters can coincide."

"How rude!" said Sabina, laughing; "what is he doing but hinting
that La Signora's conception of Lady Macbeth is a very partial and
imperfect one?"

"And why should it not be?" asked the actress, humbly enough.

"I meant," he answered warmly, "that there was more, far more in her
than in any character which she assumes; and I do not want a painter
to copy only one aspect, and let a part go down to posterity as a
representation of the whole."

"If you mean that, you shall be forgiven. No; when she is painted, she
shall be painted as herself, as she is now. Claude shall paint her."

"I have not known La Signora long enough," said Claude, "to aspire to
such an honour. I paint no face which I have not studied for a year."

"Faith!" said Scoutbush, "you would find no more in most faces at the
year's end, than you did the first day."

"Then I would not paint them. If I paint a portrait, which I seldom
do, I wish to make it such a one as the old masters aimed at,--to give
the sum total of the whole character; traces of every emotion, if it
were possible, and glances of every expression which have passed over
it since it was born into the world. They are all here, the whole past
and future of the man; and every man, as the Mohammedans say, carries
his destiny on his forehead."

"But who has eyes to see it?"

"The old masters had; some of them at least. Raphael had; Sebastian
del Piombo had; and Titian, and Giorgione. There are portraits painted
by them which carry a whole life-history concentrated into one
moment."

"But they," said Stangrave, "are the portraits of men such as they saw
around them; natures who were strong for good and evil, who were not
ashamed to show their strength. Where will a painter find such among
the poor, thin, unable mortals who come to him to buy immortality at
a hundred and