arth. If he had gone straight to bed, the enormous
dullness of one of the party would have weighed him down like a
nightmare.

Is there one of us who can not remember having seen prettier pictures in
a flame-colored setting than the Royal Academy has ever shown him? What
earthly painter could emulate or imitate the coquettish caprice of light
and shadow, that enhances the charms, and dissembles all possible
defects in those fair, fleeting Fiamminas? Something like this effect
was to be found in the miniatures that were in fashion a dozen years
ago; where part only of a sweet face and a dangerously eloquent eye
looked at you out of a wreath of dusky cloud, that shrouded all the rest
and gave your imagination play. Truly it was not so utterly wrong, the
ancient legend that wedded Hephaestus to Aphrodite. The Minnesingers and
their coevals spoke fairly enough about Love, and probably had studied
their subject; but, rely upon it, passionate Romance died in Germany
when once the close stoves prevailed. Don't you envy the imagination of
the dreamer who could trace a shape of loveliness in those dreadful
glazed tiles?

Being rather a _Guebre_ myself, I once got enthusiastic on the subject
in the company of an eccentric character, who very soon made me repent
my expansiveness. If he had committed any atrocious crime (he was a
small sandy-haired creature, and wore colored spectacles), no one knew
of it, and he never hinted at its nature; but his whole ideas seemed
tinged with a vague gloomy remorse that made him a sadder, but scarcely
a wiser or better man. Perhaps it was a monomania; let us hope so. On
that occasion he heard me out quite patiently; then the blue glasses
raised themselves to the level of my eyes, and I felt convinced their
owner was staring spectrally behind them. Considering that he measured
about thirty-four inches round the chest, his voice was extraordinarily
deep and solemn: it sounded preternaturally so as he said very slowly,
"There is one face that does not often leave me alone here, and will
follow me, I think, when I go to my appointed place: I see it now, as I
shall see it throughout all ages--always _by firelight_."

I felt very wroth, for surely to suggest a new and unpleasant train of
ideas is an infamous abuse of a _tete-a-tete_. I told my friend so; and,
as he declined to retract or apologize, or in any wise explain himself,
departed with the conviction that, though a clever man and an original