, and Honeyman
likewise interceded for him, and Mr. Bagshot promised that, as soon as
his party came in, he would ask the Minister for a tide-waitership for
him; for everybody liked the solemn, soft-hearted, willing little lad,
and no one knew him less than his pompous and stupid and respectable
father.

Miss Cann painted flowers and card-screens elegantly, and "finished"
pencil-drawings most elaborately for her pupils. She could copy prints,
so that at a little distance you would scarcely know that the copy in
stumped chalk was not a bad mezzotinto engraving. She even had a little
old paint-box, and showed you one or two ivory miniatures out of the
drawer. She gave John James what little knowledge of drawing she
had, and handed him over her invaluable recipes for mixing
water-colours--"for trees in foregrounds, burnt sienna and indigo"--"for
very dark foliage, ivory black and gamboge"--"for flesh-colour,"
etc. etc. John James went through her poor little course, but not so
brilliantly as she expected. She was forced to own that several of
her pupils' "pieces" were executed much more dexterously than Johnny
Ridley's. Honeyman looked at the boy's drawings from time to time,
and said, "Hm, ha!--very clever--a great deal of fancy, really." But
Honeyman knew no more of the subject than a deaf and dumb man knows of
music. He could talk the art cant very glibly, and had a set of Morghens
and Madonnas as became a clergyman and a man of taste; but he saw not
with eyes such as those wherewith Heaven had endowed the humble little
butler's boy, to whom splendours of Nature were revealed to vulgar
sights invisible, and beauties manifest in forms, colours, shadows of
common objects, where most of the world saw only what was dull, and
gross, and familiar. One reads in the magic story-books of a charm or a
flower which the wizard gives, and which enables the bearer to see the
fairies. O enchanting boon of Nature, which reveals to the possessor the
hidden spirits of beauty round about him! spirits which the strongest
and most gifted masters compel into painting or song. To others it
is granted but to have fleeting glimpses of that fair Art-world; and
tempted by ambition, or barred by faint-heartedness, or driven by
necessity, to turn away thence to the vulgar life-track, and the light
of common day.

The reader who has passed through Walpole Street scores of times, knows
the discomfortable architecture of all, save the great houses b