y, by
protesting that he had no judgment in pictures.

'Indeed, I don't pretend to be a connoisseur or conoscenti myself; but
I'm told the style is undeniably modern. And was not I lucky, Juliana,
not to let that MEDONA be knocked down to me? I was just going to bid,
when I heard such smart bidding; but fortunately the auctioneer let out
that it was done by a very old master--a hundred years old. Oh! your
most obedient, thinks I!--if that's the case, it's not for my money; so
I bought this, in lieu of the smoke-dried thing, and had it a bargain.'

In architecture, Mrs. Rafferty had as good a taste and as much skill as
in painting. There had been a handsome portico in front of the house;
but this interfering with the lady's desire to have a veranda, which she
said could not be dispensed with, she had raised the whole portico to
the second story, where it stood, or seemed to stand, upon a tarpaulin
roof. But Mrs. Raffarty explained that the pillars, though they looked
so properly substantial, were really hollow and as light as feathers,
and were supported with cramps, without DISOBLIGING the front wall of
the house at all to signify.

'Before she showed the company any farther,' she said, 'she must premise
to his lordship, that she had been originally stinted in room for her
improvements, so that she could not follow her genius liberally; she had
been reduced to have some things on a confined scale, and occasionally
to consult her pocket-compass; but she prided herself upon having put
as much into a light pattern as could well be; that had been her whole
ambition, study, and problem, for she was determined to have at least
the honour of having a little TASTE of everything at Tusculum.'

So she led the way to a little conservatory, and a little pinery, and
a little grapery, and a little aviary, and a little pheasantry, and a
little dairy for show, and a little cottage for ditto, with a grotto
full of shells, and a little hermitage full of earwigs, and a little
ruin full of looking-glass, 'to enlarge and multiply the effect of the
Gothic.' 'But you could only put your head in, because it was just fresh
painted, and though there had been a fire ordered in the ruin all night,
it had only smoked.'

In all Mrs. Raffarty's buildings, whether ancient or modern, there was a
studied crookedness.

'Yes,' she said, 'she hated everything straight, it was so formal and
UNPICTURESQUE. Uniformity and conformity, she observed, had t