ld.' . . . And with a tearful last farewell,
he turned away up the street, leaving Lancelot to gaze at his slow,
painful steps, and abject, earth-fixed mien.

'Ah!' thought Lancelot, 'here is the end of YOUR anthropology! At
first, your ideal man is an angel. But your angel is merely an
unsexed woman; and so you are forced to go back to the humanity
after all--but to a woman, not a man? And this, in the nineteenth
century, when men are telling us that the poetic and enthusiastic
have become impossible, and that the only possible state of the
world henceforward will be a universal good-humoured hive, of the
Franklin-Benthamite religion . . . a vast prosaic Cockaigne of steam
mills for grinding sausages--for those who can get at them. And all
the while, in spite of all Manchester schools, and high and dry
orthodox schools, here are the strangest phantasms, new and old,
sane and insane, starting up suddenly into live practical power, to
give their prosaic theories the lie--Popish conversions, Mormonisms,
Mesmerisms, Californias, Continental revolutions, Paris days of June
. . . Ye hypocrites! ye can discern the face of the sky, and yet ye
cannot discern the signs of this time!'

He was ushered upstairs to the door of his studio, at which he
knocked, and was answered by a loud 'Come in.' Lancelot heard a
rustle as he entered, and caught sight of a most charming little
white foot retreating hastily through the folding doors into the
inner room.

The artist, who was seated at his easel, held up his brush as a
signal of silence, and did not even raise his eyes till he had
finished the touches on which he was engaged.

'And now--what do I see!--the last man I should have expected! I
thought you were far down in the country. And what brings you to me
with such serious and business-like looks?'

'I am a penniless youth--'

'What?'

'Ruined to my last shilling, and I want to turn artist.'

'Oh, ye gracious powers! Come to my arms, brother at last with me
in the holy order of those who must work or starve. Long have I
wept in secret over the pernicious fulness of your purse!'

'Dry your tears, then, now,' said Lancelot, 'for I neither have ten
pounds in the world, nor intend to have till I can earn them.'

'Artist!' ran on Mellot; 'ah! you shall be an artist, indeed! You
shall stay with me and become the English Michael Angelo; or, if you
are fool enough, go to Rome, and utterl