"Ah! He need have a eye," said the man.

"Ah! He just need," was murmured among
the crowd.

"He couldn't come that 'ere burning mountain
without a eye," said the man. He had got
himself accepted as an authority, somehow, and
everybody looked at his finger as it pointed out
Vesuvius. "To come that effect in a general
illumination, would require a eye; but to come
it with two dips—why it's enough to blind
him!"

That impostor pretending not to have heard
what was said, now winked to any extent with
both eyes at once, as if the strain upon his sight
was too much, and threw back his long hair—
it was very long—as if to cool his fevered brow.
I was watching him doing it, when Henerietta
suddenly whispered, "Oh, Thomas, how horrid
you look!" and pulled me out by the arm.

Remembering Mr. Click's words, I was
confused when I retorted, "What do you mean by
horrid?"

"Oh gracious! Why, you looked," said
Henerietta, "as if you would have his blood."

I was going to answer, "So I would, for
twopence——from his nose," when I checked
myself and remained silent.

We returned home in silence. Every step of
the way, the softer sentiments that had flowed,
ebbed twenty mile an hour. Adapting my
conduct to the ebbing, as I had done to the flowing,
I let my arm drop limp, so as she could scarcely
keep hold of it, and I wished her such a cold
good night at parting, that I keep within the
bounds of truth when I characterise it as a
Rasper.

In the course of the next day, I received the
following document:

"Henerietta informs Thomas that my eyes are
open to you. I must ever wish you well, but walking
and us is separated by an unfarmable abyss.
One so malignant to superiority—Oh that look at
him!—can never never conduct
                                                   HENERIETTA.
P.S.—To the altar."

Yielding to the easiness of my disposition, I
went to bed for a week, after receiving this
letter. During the whole of such time, London
was bereft of the usual fruits of my labour.
When I resumed it, I found that Henerietta
was married to the artist of Piccadilly.

Did I say to the artist? What fell words
were those, expressive of what a galling
hollowness, of what a bitter mockery! I—I—I
—am the artist. I was the real artist of
Piccadilly, I was the real artist of the Waterloo-
road, I am the only artist of all those pavement-
subjects which daily and nightly arouse your
admiration. I do 'em, and I let 'em out. The
man you behold with the papers of chalks and
the rubbers, touching up the down-strokes of
the writing and shading off the salmon, the
man you give the credit to, the man you give
the money to, hires—yes! and I live to tell it!
—hires those works of art of me, and brings
nothing to 'em but the candles.

Such is genius in a commercial country. I
am not up to the shivering, I am not up to the
liveliness, I am not up to the-wanting-employment-
in-an-office move; I am only up to
originating and executing the work. In
consequence of which you never see me, you think
you see me when you see somebody else, and
that somebody else is a mere Commercial
character. The one seen by self and Mr. Click
in the Waterloo-road, can only write a single
word, and that I taught him, and its MULTIPLICATION
—which you may see him execute upside
down, because he can't do it the natural way.
The one seen by self and Henerietta by the Green
Park railings, can just smear into existence the
two ends of a rainbow, with his cuff and a rubber
—if very hard put upon making a show—but
he could no more come the arch of the rainbow,
to save his life, than he could come the
moonlight, fish, volcano, shipwreck, mutton, hermit,
or any of my most celebrated effects.

To conclude as I began; if there's a blighted
public character going, I am the party. And
often as you have seen, do see, and will see, my
Works, it's fifty thousand to one if you'll ever
see me, unless, when the candles are burnt down
and the Commercial character is gone, you
should happen to notice a neglected young man
perseveringly rubbing out the last traces of the
pictures, so that nobody can renew the same.
That's me.

HIS PORTMANTEAU.

I.

MR. BLORAGE walked up and down his dining-
room, on the 31st of December, 1851, with the
air and step of a man at peace with the world,
and pleased with himself. As he turned to and
fro, there was a little swing of exultation in
his gait, which no friend (had there been any
friend present to witness it) would have
recognised as a trait peculiar to Mr. Blorage.
On the contrary, he passed among his neighbours
and acquaintance as a man of a modest
and sedate temperament, and of an extreme
good nature: so that those same friends and
neighbours, full of the impudence of the world,
often laughed at the former, and let no
opportunity slip of taking advantage of the latter.
But he was accustomed to be imposed upon.
In fact, it was his business, his vocation, to
which he had been apprenticed from his earliest
childhood.

It is recorded by his nurse and mother, that
so amiable, so complacent a baby never was
born. A faint whimper was the only complaint
he made, after lying for hours in his cradle wide
awake, with nothing but a damaged tassel to
amuse him, as it swung to and fro from the hood
of the cradle in the draught—which draught
reddened his baby nose, and brought the water
into his little weak eyes. As he grew up, it
became an established fact, that Master Dick
was to be washed first or last, taken out or left
behind, given sugar-plums or forgotten, as it
happened to suit the peculiar fancy of every
other person rather than Master Dick himself,