may have heard of occasionally as a famous
painter of classical landscapes.  I don't exactly
know (he has been dead so long) how many
pictures he turned out, from first to last;
but we will say, for the sake of argument,
five hundred.  Not five of these are offered
for sale, perhaps, in the course of five years.
Enlightened collectors of old pictures pour
into the market by fifties, while specimens of
Claude, or of any other Old Master you
like to mention, only dribble in by ones and
twos.  Under these circumstances, what is to
be done?  Are unoffending owners of
galleries to be subjected to disappointment? Or
are the works of Claude, and the other
fellows, to be benevolently increased in
number, to supply the wants of persons of
taste and quality?  No man of humanity
but must lean to the latter alternative.  The
collectors, observe, don't know anything
about it—they buy Claude (to take an
instance from my own practice) as they buy all
the other Old Masters, because of his
reputation, not because of the pleasure they get
from his works.  Give them a picture with a
good large ruin, fancy trees, prancing nymphs,
and a watery sky; dirty it down dexterously
to the right pitch; put it in an old frame;
call it a Claude; and the sphere of the Old
Master is enlarged, the collector is delighted,
the picture-dealer is enriched, and the
neglected modern artist claps a joyful hand on
a well-filled pocket.  Some men have a knack
at making Rembrandts, others have a turn
for Raphaels, Titians, Cuyps, Watteaus, and
the rest of them.  Anyhow, we are all made
happy—all pleased with each other—all
benefited alike.  Kindness is propagated,
and money is dispersed.  Come along, my
boy, and make an Old Master!"

He led the way into the street, as he spoke.
I felt the irresistible force of his logic.  I
sympathised with the ardent philanthropy of
his motives. I burned with a noble ambition
to extend the sphere of the Old Masters.  In
short, I took the tide at the flood, and
followed Dick.

We plunged into some by-streets, struck off
sharp into a court, and entered a house by a
back-door.  A little old gentleman in a black
velvet dressing-gown met us in the passage.
Dick instantly presented me:  "Mr. Frank
Softly—Mr. Ishmael Pickup."  The little old
gentleman stared at me distrustfully.  I
bowed to him with that inexorable politeness
which I first learnt under the instructive fist
of Gentleman Jones, and which no force of
adverse circumstances has ever availed to
mitigate in after life.  Mr. Ishmael Pickup
followed my lead.  There is not the least
need to describe him—he was a Jew.

"Go into the front show-room, and look at
the pictures, while I speak to Mr. Pickup,"
said Dick, familiarly throwing open a door,
and pushing me into a kind of gallery beyond.
I found myself quite alone, surrounded by
modern-antique pictures of all schools and
sizes, of all degrees of dirt and dulness, with
all the names of all the famous Old Masters
from Titian to Teniers, inscribed on their
frames.  A "pearly little gem," by Claude,
with a ticket marked "Sold," stuck into the
frame, particularly attracted my attention.
It was Dick's last ten-pound job; and it did
credit to the youthful master's abilities as
a workman-like maker of Claudes.

I have been informed that, since the time
of which I am writing, the business of gentlemen
of Mr. Pickup's class has rather fallen
off, and that there are dealers in pictures,
now-a-days, who are as just and honourable
men as can be found in any profession or calling,
anywhere under the sun.  This change,
which I report with sincerity and reflect on
with amazement, is, as I suspect, mainly the
result of certain wholesale, modern improvements
in the position of contemporary Art,
which have necessitated improvements and
alterations in the business of dealing.  In my
time, the encouragers of modern painting
were limited in number to a few noblemen
and gentlemen of ancient lineage, who, in
matters of taste, at least, never presumed to
think for themselves.  They either inherited
or bought a gallery more or less full of old
pictures.  It was as much a part of their education
to put their faith in these on hearsay
evidence, as to put their faith in King, Lords
and Commons.  It was an article of their
creed to believe that the dead painters were
the great men, and that, the more the living
painters imitated the dead, the better was
their chance of becoming at some future day,
and in a minor degree, great also.  At certain
times and seasons, these noblemen and gentlemen
self-distrustfully strayed into the painting-
room of a modern artist, self-distrustfully
allowed themselves to be rather attracted by
his pictures, self-distrustfully bought one or
two of them at prices which would appear
so incredibly low, in these days, that I really
cannot venture to quote them.  The picture
was sent home; the nobleman or gentleman
(almost always an amiable and a hospitable
man) would ask the artist to his house and
introduce him to the distinguished individuals
who frequented it; but would never admit his
picture, on terms of equality, into the society,
even of the second-rate Old Masters.  His
work was hung up in any out-of-the-way
corner of the gallery that could be found;
it had been bought under protest; it was
admitted by sufferance; its freshness and
brightness damaged it terribly by contrast with
the dirtiness and the dinginess of its elderly
predecessors; and its only points selected for
praise, were those in which it most nearly
resembled the peculiar mannerism of some
Old Master, not those in which it resembled the
characteristics of the old mistress—Nature.
The unfortunate artist had no court of appeal
that he could turn to.  Nobody beneath the
nobleman, or the gentleman of ancient lineage,
so much as thought of buying a modern