he age of thirty-five.
For five years, accordingly, he managed to shield his life from the eyes
of men. Through circumstances which I need not detail, a large portion
of his personal property has come into my hands. You will remember that
he was a man of what are called elegant tastes: that is, he was
seriously interested in arts and letters. He wrote some very bad poetry,
but he produced a number of remarkable paintings. He left a mass of
papers on all subjects, few of which are adapted to be generally
interesting. A portion of them, however, I highly prize,--that which
constitutes his private diary. It extends from his twenty-fifth to his
thirtieth year, at which period it breaks off suddenly. If you will come
to my house, I will show you such of his pictures and sketches as I
possess, and, I trust, convert you to my opinion that he had in him the
stuff of a great painter. Meanwhile I will place before you the last
hundred pages of his diary, as an answer to your inquiry regarding the
ultimate view taken by the great Nemesis of his treatment of Miss
Leary,--his scorn of the magnificent Venus Victrix. The recent decease
of the one person who had a voice paramount to mine in the disposal of
Locksley's effects enables me to act without reserve.

* * * * *

_Cragthorpe, June 9th._--I have been sitting some minutes, pen in hand,
pondering whether on this new earth, beneath this new sky, I had better
resume these occasional records of my idleness. I think I will at all
events make the experiment. If we fail, as Lady Macbeth remarks, we
fail. I find my entries have been longest when my life has been dullest.
I doubt not, therefore, that, once launched into the monotony of village
life, I shall sit scribbling from morning till night. If nothing
happens--But my prophetic soul tells me that something _will_ happen. I
am determined that something shall,--if it be nothing else than that I
paint a picture.

When I came up to bed half an hour ago, I was deadly sleepy. Now, after
looking out of the window a little while, my brain is strong and clear,
and I feel as if I could write till morning. But, unfortunately, I have
nothing to write about. And then, if I expect to rise early, I must turn
in betimes. The whole village is asleep, godless metropolitan that I am!
The lamps on the square without flicker in the wind; there is nothing
abroad but the blue darkness and the smell of the rising tide. I hav