The Miseries of a Portrait-Painter. 379 



With death to do ? Did sickness wait on thee ? 

 Pain fix its ghastly seal upon thy cheek ? 

 Did dangers lurk beneath thy trusting step, 

 Or death's chief arrow silent, but most sure 

 A broken heart 



COUNTRYMAN (who has been standing by unobserved) . 



Noa, Sur, 'twar indisgeshton, 

 Some'at o' that 'ere sort the doctor said, 

 He had been dining at the Swan, and ate 

 A goose, and three black pud 



STRANGER. 



Peasant, avaunt ; 



Prate not of geese and puddings. Know, this dust, 

 This hallowed dust, was 



j COUNTRYMAN. 



Old Tom Stubbs, the grocer. 

 My feyther's uncle. Close old hunks he was, 

 As ever lived. I'se glad yo' liked 'n so, 

 For no one else did : thank ye koindly, Sur. 



(Exit STRANGER hastily.) 

 W. H. S. 



THE MISERIES OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER. 



BY ONE OF THE INITIATED. 



IT has always appeared to us that there are few professions carried 

 on in this bustling metropolis, whose nature is so little known or so 

 little understood as that of Portrait-painting : we shall here say a 

 word or two on the matter. Of the name itself, it is very doubtful 

 if we could find a single individual who has not heard something ; 

 yet of the profession, we shall probably find few who really know 

 any thing : and this is strange. A portrait, now-a-days, finds its 

 way, as a matter of course, into every house that boasts of more 

 than one story to it . There is not a person who is in possession of 

 a clear, unencumbered revenue of one hundred pounds a-year (that 

 modest, unpretending line, marking the first appearance of gentility), 

 who does not at some time of his life " sit for his picture ; " either 

 to give to his relations who beg it of him, or to his family who tease 

 him out of it. Call on business upon a man you never saw before in 

 the suburbs of London, and the first thing that strikes your eye when 

 you enter his parlour is a gilt frame of some two or three feet square 

 hanging over the fire-place, covered with yellow gauze, and con- 

 taining a portrait of a gentleman in a blue coat, generally looking 

 reddish about the nose ; or that of a lady in a large white odd-look- 

 ing cap or turban, as generally looking rather large about the bust : 

 Mrs. Smith," will the gentleman say in a piano tone, in 



ing cap o 

 " That is 



