ron, a dealer in the "fine arts," dwelling in
the good, quiet city of Mannheim, had given him a sum equivalent to
thirty-six shillings sterling for his labour. Peradventure, it was not
in the highest style of art; but what Schwartzen Baren or Weisse
Rosse--Black Bears, White Horses, Spread Eagles, and the like, the
meanest, worst-painted signs in the city--would not have commanded a
higher price?

In fact, Conrad had just genius enough to make himself miserable--to
wit, by aspiring after those honours it was impossible to attain,
keeping him thereby in a constant fret and disappointment, instead of
being content with his station, or striving for objects within his
reach. Could he have drudged on as some dauber of sign-posts, or taken
to useful employment, he might doubtless have earned a comfortable
sustenance. He had, however, like many another child of genius, a soul
above such vulgarities; yearning after the ideal and the vain; having
too much genius for himself and too little for the world; suspended in
a sort of Mahomet's coffin between earth and heaven--contemned,
rejected, by "gods, men, and columns."

Conrad Bergmann was about two-and-twenty, of good figure and
well-proportioned features, complexion fair, bright bluish-grey eyes,
whiskers well matched with a pale, poetical, it might be sickly hue of
countenance, and an expression more inclining to melancholy than
persons of such mean condition have a right to assume. His father had
brought him up to a trade--an honest thriving business--to wit, that
of _knopfmacher_ (button-maker). But Conrad, the youngest, and his
mother's favourite, happened to be indulged with more idle time than
the rest, which, for the most part, was laudably expended in scrawling
sundry hideous representations--all manner of things on walls and
wainscots. Persevering in this occupation he was forthwith pronounced
a genius. About the age of fifteen, Conrad saw a huge "St
Christopher," by a native artist, and straightway his destiny was
fixed. He struggled on for some years with little success save being
pronounced by the gossips "marvellously clever." His performances
wanted that careful and elaborate course of study indispensable even
to the most exalted genius. They were not only glaring, tawdry, and
ill-drawn, but worse conceived; flashy, crude accumulations of colour
only rendering their defects more apparent. He was in a great measure
self-taught. His impetuous, ardent imagination co