which a single name may undergo. The father
of Mr. Sleman thought proper to sign himself
Salamans, while another son gently changed his
title to Slayman, a second to Sloman, and a
third to Sleighman. The vowels are very
accommodating. Another branch of the same
family—an uncle of the subject of our sketch—
went even further, and by adding "Van" to
one end of his name, and the letter "n" to the
other, he came out as Mr. Van Slemann.
Without going into the question of how far
individual taste may have had an influence in
these changes, there is no doubt that they were
found useful in all matters of business.

Young Eizak Sleman (or Solomons) was born
in a mingled atmosphere of horses and art. If
he had come into the world only ten years
earlier, he might have found himself cradled in
a low gaming-house, and ten years before that
—about the time that Mr. Huggin was born—
he might have wondered what took his father
away for exactly seven years and a half—neither
more nor less. As it was, however, he first
saw the light in an obscure by-street, and in a
low, brown shop, where betting-books had
scarcely been driven out, and Holy Families
(painted in oil) had hardly been gathered in.
As he grew a little older, and able to use his
eyes, he found that his father's permanent
stock-in-trade was a large treacly portrait much
cracked, of a woman in a ruff, a couple of bronze
candlesticks, a few pieces of dusty old china,
some empty picture-frames, and a parchment-
coloured statuette of a figure that had no head,
only half an arm, and one leg that wanted a
foot. These things were always displayed in a
coal-hole kind of gloom, and were never
disturbed, either by buyer or seller.

As Eizak Sleman grew older still, and able to
use his mind as well as his eyes, he was
gradually taught some of the secrets of his father's
business. He had the pleasure of seeing that
business increase, and of learning the main
principles upon which it was conducted. A thing
of beauty is a joy for ever, was old Salamans's
maxim; but only if you know how to deal
with it.

The first step was to get the thing of beauty
—the Holy Family, or the Head of the
Madonna, as the case might be—and then to
carefully prepare it as bait for the trap. This
picture was never one of those manufactured
masses of paint and varnish that are popularly
supposed to be produced, in any quantity, in
certain garrets, and to be baked and smoked
in certain ovens and kitchen chimneys. The
class of buyers that old Salamans angled for,
were persons of some intelligence, some taste,
much wealth, more vanity and cupidity, and
a little judgment. These hucksters—for
hucksters they were—could not be deceived by
copies a week old, even if copyists of
sufficient talent were to be drawn from more
profitable work upon tenth-rate original pictures,
or the reproduction of the modern masters. The
common instinct of trade was against this form
of fraud. If the well-known wormeaten wood,
or the peculiar canvas of the old masters, could
be successfully imitated, what inducement would
there be to exert this extra ingenuity, when a
hundred safer and cheaper contemporary copies
are to be found in the market?

The chief works, then, that Eizak Sleman's
father was always endeavouring to secure, were
pictures painted by those few earnest pupils
who had sat at the living feet of the old masters.
Sometimes the eyes of the masters had rested
approvingly upon these works; sometimes their
hands had kindly given them a touch of grace
beyond the reach of the humble students' art.
It may be, that amongst these nameless students,
were many who strove hard to create something
that the world should cherish, and who sank to
rest with a faint hope that they had
accomplished their task. They were spared the pain of
seeing their images of beauty mellowed with age,
encrusted with a thousand falsehoods, and
patronised by greasy touters in low sale-rooms. If
the bitter destiny of their lofty labour had been
unfolded to them, they would surely have
destroyed their handiwork, and the great Salamans
family would have been fed only upon those
coarse contemporary imitations that were openly
painted and sold in the lifetime of the masters,
by hucksters who knew no guile.

The elder Salamans, however, did not confine
his dealings to the stray pictures of antiquity,
but he became a patron of living art. He
found out many British artists whose
necessities were slightly in advance of their income,
and, while he played the Samaritan, he made
many presentable additions to his pictorial
stock. With these productions, and the pupil
pictures before described, a mass of framed
and unframed rubbish was freshened up, and a
catalogue prepared of a high class periodical
sale. This sale was always largely supported by
contributions from the great Salamans family; by
pictures from "Slayman and Co." (the eldest son)
of Polyglot-square; by bronzes and articles of
virtù from Humphrey "Sloman" (the second
son) of Cameo-court, Oxford-street; and by more
"charming" pictorial productions from "Sleighman
and Sleighman" (the third son) of Sligo-
buildings, City. The sale always took place at
the auction-rooms of Mr. Van Slemann (the
brother of the elder Salamans), which were
situated in a prominent part of Mudgate-hill,
the chief thoroughfare of London. These rooms
were very gay and enticing in front, and very
small and dark in the interior.

On the morning of the sale—or the attempted
sale—about half an hour before the official
arrival of the auctioneer—a little crowd was
always collected on Mudgate-hill turning over
the fluttering leaves of the catalogues that were
nailed upon green-baize boards at the doorway,
or looking at the great picture with which the
trap was baited on that particular occasion, and
which was displayed so as to catch the eye of
passers-by at the single window in front. The
greatest part of this crowd consisted of a
number of middle-aged men, who were made
up to play a part in such a manner, that they