w all
about that time, and at best half a century is a half-baked bit of ware.
A coin-fancier would say that your fifty-year-old facts have just enough
of antiquity to spot them with rust, and not enough to give them--the
delicate and durable patina which is time's exquisite enamel.

When the first Portfolio was opened the coin of the realm bore for its
legend,--or might have borne if the more devout hero-worshippers could
have had their way,--Andreas Jackson, Populi Gratia, Imp. Caesar. Aug.
Div., Max., etc., etc. I never happened to see any gold or silver with
that legend, but the truth is I was not very familiarly acquainted with
the precious metals at that period of my career, and, there might have
been a good deal of such coin in circulation without my handling it, or
knowing much about it.

Permit me to indulge in a few reminiscences of that far-off time.

In those days the Athenaeum Picture Gallery was a principal centre of
attraction to young Boston people and their visitors. Many of us got our
first ideas of art, to say nothing of our first lessons in the
comparatively innocent flirtations of our city's primitive period, in
that agreeable resort of amateurs and artists.

How the pictures on those walls in Pearl Street do keep their places in
the mind's gallery! Trumbull's Sortie of Gibraltar, with red enough in
it for one of our sunset after-glows; and Neagle's full-length portrait
of the blacksmith in his shirt-sleeves; and Copley's long-waistcoated
gentlemen and satin-clad ladies,--they looked like gentlemen and ladies,
too; and Stuart's florid merchants and high-waisted matrons; and
Allston's lovely Italian scenery and dreamy, unimpassioned women,
not forgetting Florimel in full flight on her interminable
rocking-horse,--you may still see her at the Art Museum; and the rival
landscapes of Doughty and Fisher, much talked of and largely praised in
those days; and the Murillo,--not from Marshal Soup's collection; and the
portrait of Annibale Caracci by himself, which cost the Athenaeum a
hundred dollars; and Cole's allegorical pictures, and his immense and
dreary canvas, in which the prostrate shepherds and the angel in Joseph's
coat of many colors look as if they must have been thrown in for nothing;
and West's brawny Lear tearing his clothes to pieces. But why go on with
the catalogue, when most of these pictures can be seen either at the
Athenaeum building in Beacon Street or at the Art Gallery, and admir