to wait upon us, and comfortable appliances for study. We
require scarce any capital wherewith to exercise our trade. What
other so-called learned profession is equally fortunate? A doctor, for
example, after carefully and expensively educating himself, must invest
in house and furniture, horses, carriage, and menservants, before
the public patient will think of calling him in. I am told that such
gentlemen have to coax and wheedle dowagers, to humour hypochondriacs,
to practise a score of little subsidiary arts in order to make that of
healing profitable. How many many hundreds of pounds has a barrister to
sink upon his stock-in-trade before his returns are available? There are
the costly charges of university education--the costly chambers in the
Inn of Court--the clerk and his maintenance--the inevitable travels on
circuit--certain expenses all to be defrayed before the possible client
makes his appearance, and the chance of fame or competency arrives. The
prizes are great, to be sure, in the law, but what a prodigious sum the
lottery-ticket costs! If a man of letters cannot win, neither does he
risk so much. Let us speak of our trade as we find it, and not be too
eager in calling out for public compassion.

The artists, for the most part, do not cry out their woes as loudly as
some gentlemen of the literary fraternity, and yet I think the life
of many of them is harder; their chances even more precarious, and the
conditions of their profession less independent and agreeable than ours.
I have watched Smee, Esq., R.A., flattering and fawning, and at the same
time boasting and swaggering, poor fellow, in order to secure a sitter.
I have listened to a Manchester magnate talking about fine arts before
one of J. J.'s pictures, assuming the airs of a painter, and laying down
the most absurd laws respecting the art. I have seen poor Tomkins bowing
a rich amateur through a private view, and noted the eager smiles on
Tomkins' face at the amateur's slightest joke, the sickly twinkle of
hope in his eyes as Amateur stopped before his own picture. I have been
ushered by Chipstone's black servant through hall after hall peopled
with plaster gods and heroes, into Chipstone's own magnificent studio,
where he sat longing vainly for an order, and justly dreading his
landlord's call for the rent. And, seeing how severely these gentlemen
were taxed in their profession, I have been grateful for my own more
fortunate one, which necessitate