the Italian youth
who has come over specially to be a model, or takes to it when his organ
is out of repair. He is often quite charming with his large melancholy
eyes, his crisp hair, and his slim brown figure. It is true he eats
garlic, but then he can stand like a faun and couch like a leopard, so he
is forgiven. He is always full of pretty compliments, and has been known
to have kind words of encouragement for even our greatest artists. As
for the English lad of the same age, he never sits at all. Apparently he
does not regard the career of a model as a serious profession. In any
case he is rarely, if ever, to be got hold of. English boys, too, are
difficult to find. Sometimes an ex-model who has a son will curl his
hair, and wash his face, and bring him the round of the studios, all soap
and shininess. The young school don't like him, but the older school do,
and when he appears on the walls of the Royal Academy he is called The
Infant Samuel. Occasionally also an artist catches a couple of gamins in
the gutter and asks them to come to his studio. The first time they
always appear, but after that they don't keep their appointments. They
dislike sitting still, and have a strong and perhaps natural objection to
looking pathetic. Besides, they are always under the impression that the
artist is laughing at them. It is a sad fact, but there is no doubt that
the poor are completely unconscious of their own picturesqueness. Those
of them who can be induced to sit do so with the idea that the artist is
merely a benevolent philanthropist who has chosen an eccentric method of
distributing alms to the undeserving. Perhaps the School Board will
teach the London gamin his own artistic value, and then they will be
better models than they are now. One remarkable privilege belongs to the
Academy model, that of extorting a sovereign from any newly elected
Associate or R.A. They wait at Burlington House till the announcement is
made, and then race to the hapless artist's house. The one who arrives
first receives the money. They have of late been much troubled at the
long distances they have had to run, and they look with disfavour on the
election of artists who live at Hampstead or at Bedford Park, for it is
considered a point of honour not to employ the underground railway,
omnibuses, or any artificial means of locomotion. The race is to the
swift.

Besides the professional posers of the studio there are posers