mself appears to have been well
satisfied. In concert with the latter, Ranc concerted a plan for a
practical retort. After privately painting a copy of the picture, he cut
the head out of the canvas, and placed it in such a position that the
original could supply the opening with his own veritable face,
undetected. After all was ready, the cavilers were invited to view the
performance, but they were no better pleased. Falling completely into
the snare, the would-be critics were going on to condemn the likeness,
when the relaxing features and hearty laughter of the supposed portrait,
speedily and sufficiently avenged the painter of their fastidiousness.

ARDEMANS AND BOCANEGRA--A TRIAL OF SKILL.

These Spanish painters contended in 1689 for the office of Master of the
Works in the Cathedral of Granada. Bocanegra was excessively vain and
overbearing, and boasted his superiority to all the artists of his time;
but Ardemans, though a stranger in Granada, was not to be daunted, and a
trial of skill, "a duel with pencils," was accordingly arranged between
them, which was, that each should paint the other's portrait. Ardemans,
who was then hardly twenty-five years of age, first entered the lists,
and without drawing any outline on the canvas, produced an excellent
likeness of his adversary in less than an hour. Bocanegra, quite daunted
by this feat, and discouraged by the applause accorded to his rival by
the numerous spectators, put off his own exhibition till another day,
and in the end utterly failed in his attempt to transfer the features of
his rival to canvas. His defeat, and the jeers of his former admirers,
so overwhelmed him with mortification, that he died shortly after.

A PAINTER'S ARTIFICE TO "KEEP UP APPEARANCES."

The Spanish painter Antonio Pereda married Dona Maria de Bustamente, a
woman of some rank, and greater pretension, who would associate only
with people of high fashion, and insisted on having a duenna in constant
waiting in her antechamber, like a lady of quality. Pereda was not rich
enough to maintain such an attendant; he therefore compromised matters
by painting on a screen an old lady sitting at her needle, with
spectacles on her nose, and so truthfully executed that visitors were
wont to salute her as they passed, taking her for a real duenna, too
deaf or too discreet to notice their entrance!

A GOOD-NATURED CRITICISM.

Bartolomeo Carducci, who was employed in the ser