d prompt to advantage myself of
opportunities, I might have obtained access to the best literary
society, and sold my compositions for correspondingly higher prices.
Social standing in English literature is of equal consequence with
genius. The poor Irish governess cannot find a publisher, but Lady
Morgan takes both critics and readers by storm. A duchess's name on the
title-page protects the fool in the letter-press; irreverent
republicanism is not yet so great a respecter of persons. I was often
invited out to dinner, and went to the expense of a dress-coat and kids,
without which one passes the genteel British portal at his peril; but
found that both the expense and the stateliness of "society" were
onerous. In this department I had no perseverance; but when, one
evening, I sat with the author of "Vanity Fair," in the concert rooms at
Covent Garden, as Colonel Newcome and Clive had done before me, and took
my beer and mutton with those kindly eyes measuring me through their
spectacles, I felt that such grand companionship lifted me from the
errantry of my career into the dignity of a renowned art.

I moved my lodgings, after three months, to a pleasant square of the
West End, where I had for associates, among others, several American
artists. Strange men were they to be so far from home; but I have since
found, that the poorer one is the farther he travels, and the majority
of these were quite destitute. Two of them only had permanent
employment; a few, now and then, sold a design to a magazine; the mass
went out sketching to kill time, and trusted to Providence for dinner.
But they were good fellows for the most part, kindly to one another, and
meeting in their lodgings, where their tenure was uncertain, to score
Millais, or praise Rosetti, or overwhelm Frith.

My own life meantime passed smoothly. I had no rivals of my own
nationality; though one expatriated person, whose name I have not heard,
was writing a series of prejudiced articles for _Fraser_, which he
signed "A White Republican." I thought him a very dirty white. One or
two English travellers at the same time were making amusingly stupid
notices of America in some of the second-rate monthlies; and Maxwell, a
bustling Irishman, who owns _Temple Bar_, the _Saint James_, and
_Sixpenny Magazine_, and some half dozen other serials, was employing a
man to invent all varieties of rubbish upon a country which he had never
beheld nor comprehended.

After a few m