There was clean linen from the wash in
it, an illness, and somebody who fetched a
cab for somebody, with some inexplicable
intention of running away from somewhere
and going somewhere else. Mrs. Gummup
had an unfortunate married daughter, with
whom site appeared to be more intimate.
Her husband was a most imperfect
creature. I never knew what was the nature
of his offences, but he once did something,
for which a friend learned in the law,
told her (according to Mrs. Gumrnup) that
she "might take him up as a baggabun."
This advantage over the bad husband greatly
delighted Mrs. Gummup. She repeated it
frequently, and always chuckled at the
idea.

This was all I knew of the family except
Mr. Gummup, who could scarcely be called a
member of society, so unobtrusive was the
part he played. He was very old, and very
feeble, and I should say was a machine
requiring to be wound up before he would go at
all. In this wise:—  that he never undertook
anything of his own accord, but was obliged
to be set agoing by Mrs. Gummup; and then
he appeared to have no power of leaving off,
until Mrs. Gummup stopped him. She would
put linen into the mangle, then fetch him
out of his chair by the fire— in which he
spent the main part of his existence—and
hook him to the handle of the said machine,
giving both it and Mr. Gummup a turn
or two. This would set him going; and he
would continue to grind until Mrs. Gummup
unhooked him. In the same way, if the
poker were put into his hand, he would
poke the fire in the most infatuated manner
until disarmed. Unlike his wife, he was very
silent. The only occasions on which I heard
him speak, were when I found him sitting
alone. My arrival seemed to be a signal for
him to begin a series of painful cries of
"Sal!" which appeared to proceed from, and
affect him strongly in, the calves of the legs.
Sal was Mrs. Gummup. On sunny mornings
Mr. Gummup was generally to be seen clinging
to a line-post to which Mrs. Gummup had
attached him for the purpose of airing, and
his appearance at those seasons suggested the
idea that he had been accidentally overlooked
yesterday, and left out all night. Not that
Mrs. Gummup could have committed such a
piece of neglect, though. Almost as old and
weak as he, she always contrived to find
sufficient strength to tend this poor fading
old man. And that is the only way in
which I can explain her unceasing cheerfulness,
poor and desolate as she was. She
was never bored, my fashionable friend!
As long as there was an object for her
spirit of devotion to pour itself out upon—
an excuse for her ever-busy little trotting
about—Mrs. Gummup could find a cheery
interest in life. That removed, the simple
old soul would lie down to rest beside this
last claim on her care, unable to live a
single day for herself alone. She had some
secret to sustain her, that Mrs. Borum has
never found.

      MURILLO AND HIS PICTURE
                    CHILDREN.

WE are going to the Merced, once a convent,
now the picture museum of Seville.
We, that is, I, egomet, and Herr Schwartzenlicht,
who is, I believe, an agent of some
National Gallery or other; a German gentleman,
as I soon find out, very blind to the
nature and beauty of art, but with a lynx-eye
for the oils and varnishes such and such
a painter used, or abused. He will tell you,
on the smallest provocation, everyting you do
note want to know: on how many inch
thick oak pannel Da Vinci painted; and how
many yards long Gainsborough's brushes
were. If you are pleased with the
Titan-strength of a Zurburan, he tells you that
there is a dreadful want of balance in the
second finger of the left hand: if you stop to
admire Murillo's harmonious depth, he
desires you to observe that the painter could
never get real tone, and that his motives are
never ideal. I turn with unpedantic desire
to enjoy the reds and browns of the
Andalucian school, its skilful drapery,
swan-breasted clouds, stern ascetic sierras, lavish
flowers, and, above all, its serious religious
feeling. Seeing my German friend, at the
very first sniff of the picture gallery, put on
a grand, patronising, and encouraging air,
stroke his Judas beard, visibly swell and
become larger and higher, with the intense
desire of imparting information to a zealous but
ignorant picture-seeker, I contrive to shunt
off down a siding, leaving him for a time
entangled with the curator, thirsty for shillings,
and pursue my own way, fancy free.
I obstinately examine everything he despises,
and keep my back carefully turned to him;
for, of all bores, a learned bore, and "an
authority," is the most intolerable; and I
trace my devious way up and down the lofty,
bare, dreary room, once, I suppose, the chapel
of the convent, the east end being elevated
and approached by steps, serving now, not
unfitly in the eyes of art-votaries, as the
altar-piece. Hence, through a lonely churchyard
cloister—hard, rude, bare, trellised, and
tapestried with trailing flowers—  we mount to
the refectory and the long tiled corridors,
that once led to the dormitories where monks
dreamed of the world they had left. I seem
to be wandering over the house of a painter
newly dead, examining his masterpieces.
Even the sly touters, who pull out of their
sleeves daubs of copies and sham originals,
do not thoroughly awake me.

Spanish art was born in a convent cell,
bare and stony; and cradled, either in the
squalid market-place (where the brown gipsy
children sleep under the green melon mountains)
or at the black stump of the charcoaled