hand; and, pronouncing my productions unsaleable, declined to purchase. In this dilemma I was driven to the "slaughterhouses," or nightly auctions which are opened weekly at the West End, and constitute the last wretched refuge and resource of destitute daubers. Here I figured for some time, wasting my days in unprofitable attempts to meet the demands of a miserable market. I grew shabby and dispirited, and sank into the depths of poverty. Often I could not meet the expense of canvas, and painted on paper or millboard, or even on an old shirt stretched upon a worm-eaten strainer, begged or bought for a few halfpence from the liners' journeymen. Sometimes, aroused to exertion by a rekindling love of art, I would walk up to Hampstead or out to Norwood, and bringing back a subject, paint it up with all my old enthusiasm; but it availed me nothing: the picture was generally sacrificed for a few shillings; and even though it were afterwards sold for a fair price, the profit had been shared in the knock-out, and I was none the better.

In this exigency I gladly complied with an offer made me by Mr. Grabb, a carver and gilder, with whom it had been my wont at times to exchange pictures for frames. In addition to his regular business, he dealt in pictures to a great extent, had a large country connection, and, living himself in Soho, kept an extra shop in the city, where he always made an extraordinary show of colour and gilding on dividend days, with the especial design of catching the "country gabies," as he called them, cash in hand. With him I boarded and lodged, and received a small weekly salary, in return for which I was to occupy myself ten hours a day in making new pictures or restoring old ones, according to the demand. He had picked me up just in time for his purpose. A day or two after I entered upon my duties, he encountered a country baronet at a sale which had lasted for nearly a week. The man of title had bought between 200 and 300 lots, with the view of decorating a mansion

a season.

which he was then building in Sussex; and having no place at hand to contain his numerous purchases, had accepted the ready offer of my patron to warehouse them for him for The purchases arrived on the day of clearance, and with them the delighted owner, who had bought a whole gallery-full for about £500. They were all stacked in the silvering-room, and my employer was commissioned to select such of the number as he judged would do credit to the taste of the possessor, to restore them to a good condition, to regild the frames of such as required it, and to dispose of the rejected pieces for what they would fetch, carrying the proceeds as a set-off against his bill. Mr. Grabb knew perfectly well what to do with such a commission. The next day I was summoned to a consultation, and having locked the doors, the whole batch was gone over, and carefully scrutinised with the aid of a bowl of water and a sponge. All the large pictures (some were as big as the side of a room), many of which I felt bound to condemn as worthless, were set aside for repair and framing; while a select collection, amounting to about thirty of the smallest, best, and most saleable cabinet sizes, were thrown into a corner as unworthy of attention. For these, which were nearly worth all the rest of the collection put together, he ultimately made an allowance of £15 off his bill, amounting to several hundreds, the cost of gorgeous frames and gilding for trumpery of no value. It took me four months to prepare such of the pictures as wanted cleaning for their gilded jackets, and it would have taken as many years had proper care and leisure been allowed for the operation; but I was admonished to follow a very summary process-to get off the dirt and old varnish from the lights, and to leave the shadows to shift for themselves, trusting to a good coat of varnish to blend the whole. One immense sea-fight, which defied all our solvents to disturb its crust, Grabb undertook himself. Stripping it from the stretcher, he laid it flat on the silvering

slab, and splashing water on its surface, seized a mass of pumice-stone twice as big as his fist, and scrubbed away with bare arms, like a housemaid at a kitchen-floor, until admonished by the tinge of the water that he had done enough. The canvas was then re-strained, and turned over to me to paint again what he had scoured away. As the whole rigging of a seventy-four was clean gone, I began the slow process of renewing it; but he would not hear of that, but bade me bury everything in a cloud of smoke as the shorter way of getting over the business. When the whole were ultimately carted home and hung up in his new residence, the baronet was delighted with his gallery, and with this picture in particular, which certainly differed more than any of the others from its original appearance.

The baronet's commission being now settled and done with, the rejected pictures were withdrawn from their hiding-place and confided with many precautions to my most careful treatment. I laboured con amore in their restoration, and Grabb reaped a little fortune by their disposal. He kept me well employed. Every picture which came in to be framed or repaired, if he judged the subject saleable, was transferred to me for copying, and sorry indeed should I be to swear that the original invariably found its way back to the owner.

Soon after my domiciliation at Grabb's my uncle left Charlotte Street, and with a large cargo of English pictures emigrated to New York, where he sold his venture to good advantage. In one of the southern cities he found patronage and a wife, and grew into consideration ere he died.

I remained seven years with Grabb, and during that period attained a wonderful facility in the production of copies, and so close an acquaintance with the method and handling of some of the living London artists, as occasionally perplexed even themselves. This talent my employer turned to good account by selling forgeries of mine as the original

sketches of painters of note and reputation; and at the decease of any one of them he supplied me with canvas and panels procured from the colourmen they had dealt with, and set me about the manufacture of sketches and unfinished pictures, which were readily bought up as relics of celebrated. geniuses.

At the close of my seventh year business fell short. True, there was plenty for me to do, but owing to distress in the manufacturing districts, the sale of pictures, as is invariably the case at such seasons, very much declined. Still my principal managed to get rid of his stock, though not in the regular way of business: he packed off a portion of his best goods to country agents, and to old customers on approval, and crammed the shop in the city to overflowing, where also he took to sleeping at night, leaving me and the shop-boy sole guardians of the house in Soho. One morning about two o'clock, while soundly sleeping in my garret, I was aroused from my rest by a thundering noise at my room door, and the affrighted cries of the boy, calling upon me to arise and save myself, for the house was on fire. I dashed out of bed, contrived to huddle on a portion of my clothes, and opened the door. The room was instantly filled with smoke; the boy had already escaped through the trap-door in the roof, which, being left open, acted as a flue to the fire, the flames of which were rapidly ascending the stairs. I had no time for reflection, nor sufficient presence of mind to snatch, as I might have done, the few pounds I had hoarded from my drawer; but scrambling after him as I best might, found myself in a few minutes shivering on the roof of a neighbour's house, in my shirt and trousers, now my sole worldly possessions. A servant-girl let us in at the garret window, and I immediately despatched the boy for his master, whom, however, I did not see till the morning, when he coolly informed me that he was a ruined man, and that I must look out for some other employer. He paid me a small

arrear of wages due, and gave me a faded suit of his own to begin the world afresh. I may add that Grabb subsequently received two thousand pounds insurance money; that in two years after he was so unfortunate as to be burned out again, and received fifteen hundred; that he was overtaken by the same calamity twice afterwards in New York; and returning again to London, was again burned out: whereupon the office in which he had insured politely informed him that he might recover the money if he could in a court of justicethey should not else pay it. He never instituted any proceedings, but carried on business for ten years without insurance and without accident.

I could not afford to remain long idle; and being now pretty well known to a certain portion of the trade, I was not long of obtaining employment. My next engagement was with Sapper, who kept a shop for the sale of pictures, together with large warehouses, in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden. I thought myself pretty well versed in the art and mystery of picture-making, and conceived that after my long experience under Grabb I had little if anything left to learn. This worthy undeceived me effectually. In my former place I had been the only hand; here I found three companions, each far more experienced and more clever than myself. One, a gentleman-like old fellow, painted nothing but Morlands from one year's end to the other. He had been a contemporary of that eccentric genius, and had mastered his style so effectually that he would have deceived even me had I met with his forgeries elsewhere. He was provided with a complete portfolio of every piece of Morland's which had ever been engraved, besides a considerable number of his original chalk drawings; he had, moreover, pentagraphed outlines of the known size of the original paintings, which outlines were transferred to the canvas in a few minutes by means of tracing-paper, and painted in from the prints, which were all slightly tinted after the originals