y abstemious habits, Philip Ballister was very likely to
develop what genius might lie between his head and hand, and his
progress in the first year had been allowed, by eminent artists, to
give very unusual promise. The Ballisters were still together, under
the maternal roof, and the painter's studies were the portraits of the
family, and Fanny's picture, of course, much the most difficult to
finish. It would be very hard if a painter's portrait of his liege
mistress, the lady of his heart, were not a good picture, and Fanny
Bellairs on canvas was divine accordingly. If the copy had more
softness of expression than the original (as it was thought to have),
it only proves that wise men have for some time suspected, that love is
more dumb than blind, and the faults of our faultless idols are noted,
however unconsciously. Neither thumb-screws nor hot coals--nothing
probably but repentance after matrimony--would have drawn from Philip
Ballister, in words, the same correction of his mistress's foible that
had oozed out through his treacherous pencil!

Cupid is often drawn as a stranger pleading to be "taken in," but it is
a miracle that he is not invariably drawn as a portrait-painter. A bird
tied to the muzzle of a gun--an enemy who has written a book--an Indian
prince under the protection of Giovanni Bulletto (Tuscan for John
Bull),--is not more close upon demolition, one would think, than the
heart of a lady delivered over to a painter's eyes, posed, draped, and
lighted with the one object of studying her beauty. If there be any
magnetism in isolated attention, any in steadfast gazing, any in passes
of the hand hither and thither--if there be any magic in _ce doux
demi-jour_ so loved in France, in stuff for flattery ready pointed and
feathered, in freedom of admiration, "and all in the way of
business"--then is a lovable sitter to a love-like painter in "parlous"
vicinity (as the new school would phrase it) to sweet heart-land!
Pleasure in a vocation has no offset in political economy as honor has
("the more honor the less profit"), or portrait-painters would be
poorer than poets.

And, _malgre_ his consciousness of the quality which required softening
in his cousin's beauty, and _malgre_ his rare advantages for obtaining
over her a lover's proper ascendency, Mr. Philip Ballister bowed to the
stronger will of Miss Fanny Bellairs, and sailed for France on his
apprenticeship to Mammon.

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