The Miseries of a Portrait -Painter. 381 



effect : you will be risking your character for veracity : your hearer 

 cannot produce a likeness himself, therefore it is difficult : he sees no 

 other difficulty, therefore Portrait-painting is the art of producing a 

 likeness. Try to disturb this chain of reasoning, and you will not be 

 understood; perhaps not believed. 



Distinct from these two classes, who have in view the more or less 

 of facility with which the profession is exercised, is a third set of 

 opinions, commonly obtaining in a higher, or at least a more culti- 

 vated rank of society, and referring to the degree of pleasure or of 

 gratification which the practice of Portrait-painting must necessarily 

 afford to the artist. " How delightful it must be," they will say, 

 "to have the variety of characters coming before one that a Portrait- 

 painter meets with ! a succession of living pictures ! an endless 

 change ! and then to think that it is nature seen in its best sides ! 

 all smiles, and good-humour, and serenity ! No pouting, no negli- 

 gence of costume, no slatternly appearances ! Beauty highly adorned, 

 coming willingly before you ; seeking you out ; asking to be looked 

 at ; submitting to your calmest examination ; beaming on you while 

 you paint ; obeying all your suggestions ; anxiously calling up its 

 best looks for you ; smiling the instant you desire it ; your inter- 

 course at once placed on the most open footing ; how delightful ! 

 And then the praises you receive from the circle of friends and ad- 

 mirers who see the expression of the minute that has so often glanced 

 on them, portrayed and detained on canvass ! The congratula- 

 tions on your success ; the praises you obtain ; the rewards you get ; 

 the patronage you receive ; the friends you make ; how enviable ! 

 Old age, venerable in its aspect, honourable in its character, dignified 

 in its station, respectable in its bearing, intelligent in its experience, 

 communicative in its disposition, kind in its manner, asking the aid 

 of your skill to be enabled to live to the eyes of posterity, depending 

 upon you for its chance of being transmitted to future ages/ how 

 ennobling ! Manhood in its prime, full of health and energy, ex- 

 citing your admiration by the strength of its intellect, instructing you 

 by its knowledge of the business of life coming to receive at your 

 hands that re-creation which shall serve to gratify family affection 

 and exercise many of the best feelings of our nature, how enviable '. 

 Childhood, all bloom and purity, light curly hair, blue eyes, red lips, 

 brilliant teeth, and rosy cheeks : dimpling with pleasure, arch with 

 mischief, or timid with innocence : every form rounded by health, 

 every motion a display of grace : lisping, questioning ; unbound by 

 formality, and seeking only for a smile a being like this, brought 

 to you to be portrayed a mother gazing at your work till she feels 

 her heart swell and her eyes fill with tears, at the long future her 

 imagination runs over, with its myriads of chances and possibilities 

 to the object of your skill, bad and good, inevitable or to be avoided 

 a father treasuring your work beyond many of his possessions, as 

 the only means whereby he will hereafter be enabled to recal days 

 which are running on in perhaps perfect happiness, but which he 

 knows may be painfully contrasted by the anxieties and cares of 

 coming years to do this, to effect this how gratifying ! And then 

 the freedom of intercourse that is at once established with so many 



