o in this
country, Colonel--it's a melancholy fact.'

"'High art! I should think it is high art!' whispers old Smee; 'fourteen
feet high, at least!" And then out loud he says 'The picture has very
fine points in it, Gandish, as you say. Foreshortening of that arm,
capital! That red drapery carried off into the right of the picture very
skilfully managed!'

"'It's not like portrait-painting, Smee--Igh art,' says Gandish. 'The
models of the hancient Britons in that pictur alone cost me thirty
pound--when I was a struggling man, and had just married my Betsey here.
You reckonise Boadishia, Colonel, with the Roman elmet, cuirass, and
javeling of the period--all studied from the hantique, sir, the glorious
hantique.'

"'All but Boadicea,' says father. 'She remains always young.' And he
began to speak the lines out of Cowper, he did--waving his stick like an
old trump--and famous they are," cries the lad:

"When the British warrior queen,
Bleeding from the Roman rods"--

"Jolly verses! Haven't I translated them into alcaics?" says Clive, with
a merry laugh, and resumes his history.

"'Oh, I must have those verses in my album,' cries one of the young
ladies. 'Did you compose them, Colonel Newcome?' But Gandish, you see,
is never thinking about any works but his own, and goes on, 'Study of my
eldest daughter, exhibited 1816.'

"'No, pa, not '16,' cries Miss Gandish. She don't look like a chicken, I
can tell you.

"'Admired,' Gandish goes on, never heeding her,--'I can show you what
the papers said of it at the time--Morning Chronicle and Examiner--spoke
most ighly of it. My son as an infant Ercules, stranglin the serpent
over the piano. Fust conception of my picture of 'Non Hangli said
Hangeli.''

"'For which I can guess who were the angels that sat,' says father. Upon
my word, that old governor! He is a little too strong. But Mr. Gandish
listened no more to him than to Mr. Smee, and went on, buttering himself
all over, as I have read the Hottentots do. 'Myself at thirty-three
years of age!' says he, pointing to a portrait of a gentleman in leather
breeches and mahogany boots; 'I could have been a portrait-painter, Mr.
Smee.'

"'Indeed it was lucky for some of us you devoted yourself to high art,
Gandish,' Mr. Smee says, and sips the wine and puts it down again,
making a face. It was not first-rate tipple, you see.

"'Two girls,' continues that indomitable Mr. Gandish. 'Hidea for 'Babes
in the Wood.' 'V