e of facts,--the age of facts, sir."

"Well," said the old gentleman, with a pleasant smile, "if we meet
again, perhaps, at least, I may direct your researches to the proper
source of intelligence." And with that he buttoned his greatcoat,
whistled to his dog, and departed.

It so happened that I did meet again with the old gentleman, exactly
four days after our brief conversation in Mr. D--'s bookshop. I was
riding leisurely towards Highgate, when, at the foot of its classic
hill, I recognised the stranger; he was mounted on a black pony, and
before him trotted his dog, which was black also.

If you meet the man whom you wish to know, on horseback, at the
commencement of a long hill, where, unless he has borrowed a friend's
favourite hack, he cannot, in decent humanity to the brute creation,
ride away from you, I apprehend that it is your own fault if you have
not gone far in your object before you have gained the top. In short, so
well did I succeed, that on reaching Highgate the old gentleman invited
me to rest at his house, which was a little apart from the village; and
an excellent house it was,--small, but commodious, with a large garden,
and commanding from the windows such a prospect as Lucretius would
recommend to philosophers: the spires and domes of London, on a clear
day, distinctly visible; here the Retreat of the Hermit, and there the
Mare Magnum of the world.

The walls of the principal rooms were embellished with pictures of
extraordinary merit, and in that high school of art which is so little
understood out of Italy. I was surprised to learn that they were all
from the hand of the owner. My evident admiration pleased my new friend,
and led to talk upon his part, which showed him no less elevated in his
theories of art than an adept in the practice. Without fatiguing
the reader with irrelevant criticism, it is necessary, perhaps, as
elucidating much of the design and character of the work which these
prefatory pages introduce, that I should briefly observe, that he
insisted as much upon the connection of the arts, as a distinguished
author has upon that of the sciences; that he held that in all works of
imagination, whether expressed by words or by colours, the artist of the
higher schools must make the broadest distinction between the real and
the true,--in other words, between the imitation of actual life, and the
exaltation of Nature into the Ideal.

"The one," said he, "is the Dutch School, the