ether, had for awhile handed over Ethel Newcome. Let
those pity her who can feel their own weakness and misgoing; let those
punish her who are without fault themselves.
Clive did not offer to follow her to Scotland, he knew quite well
that the encouragement he had had was only of the smallest; that as a
relation she received him frankly and kindly enough; but checked him
when he would have adopted another character. But it chanced that they
met in Paris, whither he went in the Easter of the ensuing year, having
worked to some good purpose through the winter, and despatched as on a
former occasion his three or four pictures, to take their chance at the
Exhibition.
Of these it is our pleasing duty to be able to corroborate to some
extent, Mr. F. Bayham's favourable report. Fancy sketches and historical
pieces our young man had eschewed; having convinced himself either that
he had not an epic genius, or that to draw portraits of his friends, was
a much easier task than that which he had set himself formerly. Whilst
all the world was crowding round a pair of J. J,.'s little pictures,
a couple of chalk heads were admitted into the Exhibition (his great
picture of Captain Crackthorpe on horseback, in full uniform, I must
admit was ignominiously rejected), and the friends of the parties had
the pleasure of recognising in the miniature room, No. 1246, "Picture of
an Officer,"--viz., Augustus Butts, Esq., of the Life Guards Green; and
"Portrait of the Rev. Charles Honeyman," No. 1272. Miss Sherrick
the hangers refused; Mr. Binnie, Clive had spoiled, as usual, in the
painting; the heads, however, before-named, were voted to be faithful
likenesses, and executed in a very agreeable and spirited manner. F.
Bayham's criticism on these performances, it need not be said, was
tremendous. "Since the days of Michael Angelo you would have thought
there never had been such drawings." In fact, F. B., as some other
critics do, clapped his friends so boisterously on the back, and
trumpeted their merits with such prodigious energy, as to make his
friends themselves sometimes uneasy.
Mr. Clive, whose good father was writing home more and more wonderful
accounts of the Bundelcund Bank, in which he had engaged, and who was
always pressing his son to draw for more money, treated himself to
comfortable rooms at Paris, in the very same hotel where the young
Marquis of Farintosh occupied lodgings much more splendid, and where he
lived, no doubt,
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