represent St Paul as a man of an insignificant
presence, because the apostle so describes
himself; or to get a stammering man to sit for
the portrait of Moses, because the great law-
giver had an impediment in his speech. This
is not what Raphael did when he painted Paul
preaching at Athens, with mighty, uplifted
arms; nor what Michael Angelo did, when
he seated Moses in the chair of Sinai,
indignantly overlooking all beneath him, and ready
to hurl down the tables of stone, like thunderbolts,
on the heads of his unbelieving followers.
"We do not mean to say that lovers of truth
might not be found who would accord with Sir
David's opinion, and let good consequences
take their chance; but he did not look at
the matter in this comprehensive light. He
thought that there was no risk of chance,
remote or immediate, except in not making
the local history local enough; and he did
not see that this could have endangered the
object he had in view, and served to
contract instead of extending it.

Though Wilkie never married, one of the
best features in his character was domesticity.
He was no sooner rich enough than he
brought his mother and sister from Scotland,
in order that they might partake his
prosperity in the way most agreeable to family
affections. He was also careful to give them
news of himself before they came. As it is
pleasant to know the daily habits of
distinguished men, we give the following account
of his life at Kensington from one of his
letters to his sister.

"The anxiety my mother has laboured
under about my health, on seeing that I had
not with my own hand directed the
newspaper, is entirely groundless. I am as well
now as I have been for a very long time, and
am going on with the painting in my usual
moderate way. I am sometimes glad to get
anybody to direct the newspaper on the
Monday forenoon for the sake of saving time,
which is an important consideration in these
short days. Everybody I meet with compliments
me on the improvement of my looks;
and I am taking all the means in my power
to retain my improved appearance. I dine,
as formerly, at two o'clock, paint two hours
in the forenoon and two hours in the afternoon,
and take a short walk in the park or
through the fields twice a day. In the
evening, I go on with the mathematics, which
I take great delight in; and I have also begun
a system of algebra, a study I should like to
learn something of too."

When his mother and sister came, the good
artist took care that as much as possible of
the old household furniture, to which their
eyes had been habituated, should come with
them from Scotland; and he said (his
biographer informs us), that "if he were desired
to name the happiest hour of his life, it was
when he saw his honoured mother and much-
loved sister sitting beside him while he was
painting."

The ''short walk through the fields" must
have been in those between Kensington,
Brompton, and Little Chelsea, now fast
disappearing before the growth of streets.

In Shaftesbury House the sunny portion
of Wilkie's life terminated in clouds that
gathered suddenly and darkly upon him;
his mother dying; his sister losing the man
she was about to marry; his eldest brother
dead in India; a second brother coming home
to die, from Canada; a younger brother
involved in commercial difficulties; and the
artist himself, who was too gererous not to
suffer in every way with his family, losing
further money by the failure of houses, and
failing in his own health, which he never
recovered. Such are the calamities to which
comic as well as tragic painters are liable, in
order that all men may share, and share alike
till "tears can be wiped from off all faces."
Wilkie subsequently removed to Vicarage
Place, in Church Street; and this, his last
abode in Kensington, was also his last in
England. He travelled for health and study's
sake, in Italy, Germany, and Spain; returned
and travelled again, going to Palestine and
other dominions of the Sultan, whose portrait
he painted; made other ineffectual attempts
to become an artist out of his first line; and,
with a strangely romantic end for one who
began with the line which he ought never to
have forsaken, died on his way home, and
was buried off Gibraltar in the great deep.

After all, there was in Wilkie's character,
as there is in most men's, however amusing
they may be, a grave as well as comic side,
corresponding with the affectionate portion
of it; and this very likely it was, that in
conjunction with the provocations given him
by Hazlitt, and by jealous brother artists, led
him to attempt higher subjects, and a deeper
tone in painting. He also appears to have
had a delicacy of organisation, tending to the
consumptive; though prudence and prosperity
kept him alive to the age of fifty-six.

"Nature is vindicated of her children."
The sensibilites of a man of genius turn to
good account for his fellow-creatures,
compared with whom he is but a unit. Wilkie
himself enjoyed as well as suffered: he had a
happy fireside during the greater part of his
life; he had always an artist's eye, which is
itself a remuneration; and he knew that ages
to come would find merit in his productions.
Turning northward out of the high road,
between Lower and Upper Phillimore Place,
is Hornton Street, at the furthest house in
which, on the right hand, resided for some
years Doctor Thomas Frognall Dibdin, the
sprightliest of bibliomaniacs. He was not a
mere bibliomaniac: he really saw, though
not very far, into the merit of the books which
he read. He also made some big books of
his own, which, though for the most part of
little interest but to little antiquaries,
contain passages amusing for their animal
spirits and enjoyment. When the Doctor