f my will, and of my
means to gratify you."

"To think that I could have doubted--that I could have feared you!"
sobbed Lady Lucy, as tears of joy coursed down her cheeks. "But, Walter,
it is not every husband who would have shown such generosity."

"I think there are few husbands, Lucy, who do not estimate truth and
candor as among the chief of conjugal virtues:--ah, had you confided in
me when first you felt the bondage of debt, how much anguish would have
been spared you!"

* * * * *

JONES ON CHANTREY.[A]

[Footnote A: _Sir Francis Chantrey, R. A.; Recollections of his Life,
Practice and Opinions_. By George Jones, R. A. London, Moxon, 1849.]

The criticisms of Literature in the _London Times_ are as clever in their
way as the other articles of that famous journal. It keeps a critic of
the Poe school for pretenders, and the following review of a recent life
of Chantrey the sculptor is in his vein. It embodies a just estimate of
the artist.

A good life of Chantrey would be a welcome and a serviceable contribution
to the general store. Chantrey was a national sculptor in the sense that
Burns was a national poet. His genius, of the highest order, indicated
throughout his career the nature of the soil in which it had been
cherished. As man and artist he was essentially British. By his own
unassisted strength he rose from the ranks, and achieved the highest
eminence by the simplest and most legitimate means. His triumph is at
once a proof of his power, and an answer to all who, instead of putting
shoulder to the wheel, console their mediocrity by railing against the
cold exclusiveness of aristocratic institutions.

Chantrey began life in a workshop. A friend, toward the close of the
artist's life, passing through his studio, was struck by a head of
Milton's Satan lying in a corner. "That head," said Chantrey to his
visitor, "was the very first thing that I did after I came to London.
I worked at it in a garret, with a paper cap on my head, and, as I could
then afford only one candle, I stuck that one in my cap that it might
move along with me, and give me light whichever way I turned." A still
severer school of discipline had, previously to his appearance in the
London garret, given his mind the practical turn chiefly characteristic
of his life and works. He was born in 1782, at Norton, in Derbyshire, and
when eight years old lost his father. His mother married again, and in