company was very profitable, or indeed to those
who had purchased our shares at anything like
the original price. But to others they were
of comparative little value: the market-price
having risen to so high a premium, that even
the large interest we got, was hardly large
enough to make the shares pay when bought
at such a price. But this state of things told
well for some people. For instance, I, who as
director had been presented with forty shares,
now found them so valuable, that I determined
to sell them at the premium of five pounds per
share, making, with the sum they were worth at
par—but which, having got them gratis, I had
never been called upon to pay—of ten pounds
each, a nice little amount of seven hundred and
fifty pounds. The days when I had to calculate
whether it was possible to live upon a hundred
and fifty pounds a year, had passed away
indeed.

A crusade had been commenced against
Finance and Credit Companies, but it did not
seem to injure us in any way. Two or three
undertakings of like nature to our own, had
been such very decided successes, that every
morning's paper brought forth something new
on the same basis. The Times said the day
would not be far distant when every town in
the kingdom, and then every street in every
town, would have its own particular Finance
Company. Still the mania for these schemes
continued, though many such companies were
born but to die immediately. Our direction
increased in number and respectability. We got a
live (Irish) peer for our chairman, and more
than one member of the House of Commons
joined the board. I began to have serious ideas
of getting into parliament at the next general
election. I was a rich man. Hardly any
"good thing" was floated in the City without
my having a share of it offered me; and before
anything of any magnitude could be concluded
with our own company, matters were invariably
made pleasant to me.

PORTRAITS.

PORTRAITS may be considered the highest
effort of the painter's art; higher, a good deal,
than historical painting, which amounts to little
more than the mere pictorial poses plastiques
and theatricals. Higher, too, than little pieces
of genre, which in some instances are a species
of portrait-painting. Historical pictures, like
the Roman scenes of Le Brun in the Louvre,
may be excellent studies and exercises in colour,
form, and grouping; but, as the attempt of a
Frenchman of the eighteenth century to show
us how the Romans, before the beginning of
the first, looked and behaved, the whole is false.
He is painting from the description of others.
To take an instance from Mr. Philip. Most of
us know the traditional accessories of Spanish
life and costume, and could put together the
usual costumier properties into what we should
fancy would be a correct representative of Life
in Spain. But a glance at the " Murillo" now
on the walls of the Academy would show how
much more is wanting, and that the mere
"wardrobe" portion is, in fact, the least
characteristic portion of the whole. The mere
vulgar eye rests on these generalities, but the
skilful one who has been in the country and
drank in the strange lights and colours—the
character, in short—makes an effort that there
is no mistaking, and leaves an impression that
even those who have not seen, know to be
true.

But with portraits this principle is yet more
remarkable. There, everything must be real,
honest, and natural. The divine, almost
intangible light of expression, hovering over the
face, is seized on by living skill and intellect and
imprisoned in colours. Tints of fancy, of
humour, of firmness, of melancholy and pensiveness,
in short, of the hundred-and-one shades of
expression—the presence, in fact, of life—this
is what gives the portrait its special value.
The absence of this is what drives the
photographic portraiture out of the realms of art
into the cold enclosure of mechanism and
machinery.

This is scarcely understood even as yet. It
is often said that a photograph must be a
perfect likeness, for, according to the common
expression, " it is you." But it is not you. The
instrument itself is incorrect, and exaggerates.
It is forgotten that the true portrait-painter
does not take his sitter at one special
moment, when the eyes are fixed on him in a
hard staring gaze, with all the muscles rigid,
and the features in a state of smirking catalepsy.
But he draws, as it were, from memory, from
an acquaintance of so many hours, during which
the sitter has been opposite to him, and during
which time he has learned by heart the natural,
habitual, and most characteristic expression.
For a few moments, by the help of some
observation, he has caught, say, the sly roguish
twinkle of humour in his sitter's eyes, and
has secured it for ever. The mere mechanical
shape of the features (which the photograph
only gives) he has before him, to be put in at
any moment. Then enter into the composition
the skilful touch, the bright bits of colour,
the transparent delicacy of tone, the poetry
of treatment, which are reflections from the
skilful mind taking the picture. In short,
anything that is the free natural impression of
the soul and of life has at once an interest for
other souls—a doctrine often preached by Mr.
Ruskin, who has shown how " precious," on
this principle, become the unfettered
workman's carving on the capital of a pillar, as
contrasted with merely arbitrary and
conventional design.

On these principles it follows that a portrait
has a special interest for us, and that a collection
of portraits must be singularly attractive.
It is hopeless to think of knowing how some
men who are gone, looked; but a portrait is the
best substitute. It is, in truth, the only real
link between death and life. When, therefore,