sterious melancholy glory of their
assembly.

--Seemed listening to the earth,
Their ancient mother, for some comfort yet.

Among the many harmless little pieces representing vases of flowers,
woodland melody, and other conventions, I caught sight of a portrait of a
young girl ("My lady at her casement" type) drawn with mild ability.
The signature, very large and clear, was

CH. CHAPLIN.

On referring to the minute brass plate beneath so innocent a vanity, we
learned that Charles Chaplin, 1825-1891, was a painter of the "French
School." Pictures must run in the family.

The first afternoon, Hosea and myself could find no specimen of an
English artist among the multitude: but returning another day to make
certain (and once again we had the gallery more or less to ourselves)
we found a small and typical study by Wilkie, and a portrait by Sir
Thomas Lawrence. Before this last, a work of the loftiest morality--in
its subject I mean--and of a colouring delicately fine, Hosea stood in
enthusiasm. "I'm not sure," he said, and once again drew an impression
before proceeding, "that that isn't the finest thing we've seen." The
spectacle of King Arthur in his bronze near the exit, in his bronze
but somehow devoid of his grandeur, ended our artistic adventures.
The business of criticism, no doubt, is to keep cool: but this we had
scarcely been able to do. I should have given up early, but for the
determination of Hosea; and even he began to feel the scorching heat above
the aesthetic calm.

The ship's football was brought out in the evening, and on a patch of
waste ground alongside, flanked by thickets of rank weed, and ankle-deep
in sand and coal-dust, we enjoyed ourselves most strenuously. There
were one or two real drawbacks. A vigorous and unwary kick was apt to
send the ball into the river, and to recover it meant clambering up
and down the slanting wall of the wharf, which was coated with black
grease, fishing with a pole, anxiously watching the currents, and quickly
becoming as black and greasy as the masonry. And on the other hand, there
was here a depot of large drain-pipes, which might equally receive the
erratic ball; then arose the questions: Whereabouts in the pipes had
it bounced? Would the drain-pipe on which you were standing really roll
from under you and bring down a dozen others? Meanwhile the watchman of
the depot would be there uttering untranslated dissati