382 The Miseries of a Portrait-Painter. 



persons you could not otherwise expect to know the great by sta- 

 tion, the noble by intellect ! The mass of information thrown open 

 to you by the opportunity of reading 1 , in the abstract, the knowledge 

 on every possible subject collected by the persons who come before 

 you ! The facility with which, by practice, you can do what is re- 

 quired of you, and gratify the world ! The pleasure it must afford 

 you to find you can give universal satisfaction ! The honest pride 

 you must feel in seeing your works sought after known every 

 where ! * Surely a Portrait-painter,' will they say, * must be one 

 of the most favoured and happy of mortals surely he must live in 

 one round of gratifying excitement ! Sorrow, and care, and anxiety 

 cannot be for such a being as this : the business of life and the 

 drudgery of the world are for others : he lives to be sought after, 

 rewarded, instructed, and amused : he goes to rest happy and he 

 rises to be again made as happy : one day is like another, and the re- 

 volving years only affect him favourably ! " 



Such are the opinions of not an unimportant class of people with 

 regard to the profession of Portrait-painting: such are the ideas 

 they form, and the view they are pleased to take of it : most heart- 

 ily do we pray these were just opinions. Alas ! here is only the 

 poetry of the profession : the plain prose no way resembles this de- 

 scription : it is the bright and dreamy side of the picture ; the every- 

 day reality is of a very different character : instead of pleasure, it is 

 pain : instead of amusement, it is wearying toil. We who write 

 repudiate this imaginative view : we are entitled to do so, for to our 

 sorrow we have to say that we know the truth by experience we 

 are of the race. We claim for our much worried brethren of the 

 brush a round robin of condolence from all who will read this, for 

 the plagues, and the annoyances, and the miseries we assure them a 

 Portrait-painter has to go through from morning to night, from day to 

 day, and from year to year. We verily believe that they are a race 

 set apart, by some unaccountable arrangement of nature, for the 

 express purpose of showing how much vexation and annoyance it is 

 possible to accumulate on a set of individuals without driving them 

 crazy : we extend the right-hand of misery to all who are concerned. 

 We wish not to be profane, but we cannot help summing up our 

 opinions of the practice of Portrait-painting in a short reference to 

 an idea of Paley's as regards the nature of that place which is de- 

 cided to be not nameable to ears polite. This able and unmitred 

 writer, viewing the many degrees of evil and of good which exist, and 

 considering that between the lowest good rewarded, and the least 

 evil consigned to punishment, but a slight difference can obtain, 

 expresses his willingness to admit the possibility of degrees of punish- 

 ment and of reward. Accepting the Catholic purgatory, then, upon 

 this authority, we are clear upon it, that one of the most severe 

 punishments there set out must be the having to practise from 

 morning to night as a Portrait-painter among the shades. It is an 

 occupation which would be admirably adapted to the place ; espe- 

 cially if the condemned can be made to have a keen perception of 

 their own deficiencies and limited powers as Artists, and can be 

 permitted to see what ought to be done, and what only they can do. 



