It is urged as a striking inequality that enterprising manufacturers, for instance, should rise to great wealth and honours, while thousands of their dependents are labouring hard at one or two shillings a day; but we are to recollect that if it had not been for men like these the working-classes would have been perishing for want; they collect the others together, give a direction and find a vent for their industry, and may be said to exercise a part of sovereign capacity. Everything has its place and due subordination. If authors had the direction of the world nothing would be left standing but printing-presses.

N. What do you think of that portrait?

H. It is very ladylike, and, I should imagine, a good likeness.

N. J said I might go on painting yet he saw no falling off. They are pleased with it. I have painted almost the whole family, and the girls would let their mother sit to nobody else. But, Lord! everything one can do seems to fall so short of nature-whether it is the want of skill or the imperfection of the art, that cannot give the successive movements of expression and changes of countenance-I am always ready to beg pardon of my sitters after I have done, and to say I hope they'll excuse it. The more one knows of the art, and indeed the better one can do, the less one is satisfied. This made Titian write under his pictures "faciebat," signifying that they were only in progress. I remember Burke came in one day when Sir Joshua had been painting one of the Lennoxes; he was quite struck with the beauty of the performance, and said he hoped Sir Joshua would not touch it again; to which the latter replied, that if he had seen the original he would have thought little of the picture, and that there was a look which it was hardly in the power of art to give. No all we can do is to produce something that makes a distant ap

proach to nature, and that serves as a faint relic of the individual. A portrait is only a little better memorial than the parings of the nails or a lock of the hair.

H. Who is it?

N. It is a Lady W ; you have heard me speak of her before. She is a person of great sense and spirit, and combines very opposite qualities from a sort of natural strength of character. She has shown the greatest feeling and firmness united; no one can have more tenderness in her domestic connections, and yet she has borne the loss of some of them with exemplary fortitude. Perhaps the one is a consequence of the other; for where the attachment or even the regret is left, all is not lost. The mind has still a link to connect it with the beloved object. She has no affectation, and therefore yields to unavoidable circumstances as they arise. Inconsolable grief is often mere cant, and a trick to impose on ourselves and others. People of any real strength of character are seldom affected: those who have not the clue of their own feelings to guide them do not know what to do, and study only how to produce an effect. I recollect one of the Miss Berrys, Lord Orford's favourites, whom I met with at a party formerly, using the expression: "That seal of mediocrity, affectation!" Don't you think this striking?

H. Yes; but not quite free from the vice it describes. N. Oh! they had plenty of that; they were regular bluestockings, I assure you, or they would not have been so entirely to his lordship's taste, who was a mighty coxcomb. But there is none of that in the person I have been speaking of--she has very delightful, genteel, easy manners.

H. That is the only thing I envy in people in that class.

N. But you are not to suppose they all have it; it is only those who are born with it, and who would

have had it in a less degree in every situation of life. Vulgarity is the growth of courts as well as of the hovel. We may be deceived by a certain artificial or conventional manner in persons of rank and fashion; but they themselves see plainly enough into the natural character. I remember Lady W- told me, as an instance to this purpose, that when she was a girl she and her sister were introduced at court; and it was then the fashion to stand in a circle, and the Queen came round and spoke to the different persons in turn. There was some high lady who came in after them, and pushed rudely into the circle so as to get before them. But the Queen, who saw the circumstance, went up and spoke to them first, and then passed on (as a just punishment) without taking any notice whatever of the forward intruder. I forget how it arose the other day, but she asked me: "Pray, Mr. Northcote, is discretion reckoned one of the cardinal virtues?" "No," I said, “it is not one of them, for it is all." If we had discretion at all times, we should never do wrong; but we are taken off our guard by being thrown into new and difficult situations, and have not time to weigh the consequences or to summon resolution to our aid. That is what Opie used to say when he had been engaged in an argument overnight—what excellent answers he could give the next day, and was vexed with himself for not having thought of them. No; if we had sufficient presence of mind to foresee the consequences of our actions on the spot, we should very rarely have occasion to repent of them afterwards.

H. You put me in mind of Cicero's account of the cardinal virtues, in his ‘Offices,' who makes them out to be four; and then says they are all referable to the first, which is Prudence.

N. Ay; do you recollect what they are?

H. Prudence, Temperance, Justice, and Fortitude.

N. They are too much alike. The most distinct is Fortitude.

H. I never could make much of Cicero, except his two treatises on Friendship and Old Age, which are most amiable gossiping. I see that Canning borrowed his tautology from Cicero, who runs on with such expressions as, "I will bear-I will suffer-I will endure any extremity." This is bad enough in the original, it is inexcusable in the copy. Cicero's style, however, answered to the elegance of his finely-turned features; and in his long graceful neck you may trace his winding and involuted periods.

N. Do you believe in that sort of stuff?
H. Not more than I can help.

Conversation the Twenty-second.

N. I OUGHT to cross myself, like the Catholics, when I see you. You terrify me by repeating what I say. But I see you have regulated yourself. There is nothing personally offensive, except what relates to Sir Walter. You make him swear too, which he did not do. He would never use the expression Egad." These little things mark the gentleman. I am afraid, if he sees it, he'll say I'm a babbler. That is what they dread so at court that the least word should transpire.

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H. They may have their reasons for caution. At least, they can gain nothing, and might possibly lose equally by truth or falsehood, as it must be difficult to convey an adequate idea of royalty. But authors are glad to be talked about. If Sir W. Scott has an objection to having his name mentioned, he is singularly unlucky. Enough was said in his praise; and I do not believe he is captious. I fancy he takes the rough with the smooth. I did not well know what to do. You seemed to express a

wish that the Conversations should proceed, and yet you are startled at particular phrases, or I would have brought you what I had done to show you. I thought it best to take my chance of the general impression.

N. Why, if kept to be published as a diary after my death, they might do: nobody could then come to ask me questions about them. But I cannot say they appear very striking to me. One reason may be, what I observe myself cannot be very new to me. If others are pleased they are the best judges. It seems very odd that you, who are acquainted with some of the greatest authors of the day, cannot find anything of theirs worth setting down.

H. That by no means pleases them. I understand Godwin is angry at the liberty I take with you. He is quite safe in this respect. I might answer him much in the manner of the fellow in The Country Girl' when his friend introduces his mistress and he salutes her— “Why, I suppose if I were to introduce my grandmother to you" Sir," replies the other, "I should treat her with the utmost respect." So I shall never think of repeating any of Godwin's conversations. My indifference may arise in part, as you say, from their not being very new to me. Godwin might, I dare say, argue very well on the doctrine of philosophical necessity or many other questions; but then I have read all this before in Hume or other writers, and I am very little edified, because I have myself had access to the same sources that he has drawn from. But you, as an artist, have been pushed into an intercourse with the world as well as an observation of nature, and combine a sufficient knowledge of general subjects with living illustrations of them. I do not like the conversation of mere men of the world or anecdote-mongers, for there is nothing to bind it together, and the other sort is pedantic and tiresome from repetition—so that there is nobody but you I can come to.