men who, instead of looking back on better
days, look back on a position against which
the Charterhouse contrasts as a great scene
of luxury. Kind patrons get admission to
the Charterhouse for aged fathers of their
footmen, and for people of that class — the only
class for which its present style of government
is fitted. To the sensitive and educated man,
smitten by poverty in his old age, the asylum
offered in the Charterhouse is lost: one of the
very few asylums that were ever opened to
such sufferers.

Some months ago, we made our readers
acquainted with the French community of
Little Sisters of the Poor, and told of the
house in Paris wherein a few peasant women
maintain ninety old people by their own
exertions—beg for them, feed them, warm
them, cheer them with such true sympathy
and Christian love that the most refined scholar
or poet in Christendom, if he were fallen
into poverty, might sit in his old age among
those poor coarse women, and be made subject
to their pious care, without a sense of degra-
dation. In England, in the Charterhouse, on
a munificent foundation, thousands of pounds
yearly are spent upon the care of eighty poor
old men. The money provides for the rich,
salaries, houses, wine: we have partly seen
what it does for the Poor Brothers. The
"Little Sisters " across the Channel, with
bright eyes and busy hands, with a maid-
servant for founder, and not a sous of capital,
have done so much, that it is a pleasant dream
(but quite a dream) to fancy what result a
little of their spirit could produce out of the
plentiful resources of the Charterhouse.

TOO MUCH BLUE.

EARLY on a fine summer morning, an old
man was walking on the road between Brussels
and Namur. He expected a friend to
arrive by the diligence, and he set out some
time before it was due, to meet it on the road.
Having a good deal of time to spare, he
amused himself by watching any object of
interest that caught his eye; and at length
stopped to inspect the operations of a painter,
who, mounted on a ladder placed against the
front of a wayside inn, was busily employed
in depicting a sign suitable to its name, " The
Rising Sun."

"Here," said the old man to himself, " is
an honest dauber, who knows as much of
perspective as a cart-horse; and who, I'll
warrant, fancies himself a Rubens. How he
brushes in that ultramarine sky!"

The critic then commenced walking back-
wards and forwards before the inn, thinking
that he might as well loiter there for the
diligence as walk on farther. The painter,
meantime, continued to lay on fresh coats of
the brightest blue, which appeared to
aggravate the old gentleman very much. At length,
when the sign-painter took another brush full
of blue paint to plaster on, the spectator
could endure it no longer, and exclaimed
severely:—

"Too much blue!"

The honest painter looked down from his
perch, and said, in that tone of forced
calmness which an angry man sometimes
assumes:

"Monsieur does not perceive that I am
painting a sky?"

"Oh, yes, I see very well you are trying to
paint a sky, but I tell you again there is too
much blue!"

"Did you ever see skies painted without
blue, Master amateur?"

"I am not an amateur. I merely tell you,
in passing—I make the casual remark—that
there is too much blue; but do as you like.
Put more blue, if you don't think you have
trowelled on enough already."

"But I tell you, that I want to represent a
clear blue sky at sunrise."

"And I tell you that no man in his senses
would make a sky at sunrise blue."

"By St. Gudula, this is too much!"
exclaimed the painter, coming down from his
ladder, at no pains this time to conceal his
anger; " I should like to see how you would
paint skies without blue."

"I don't pretend to much skill in sky-
painting; but, if I were to make a trial, I
wouldn't put in too much blue."

"And what would it look like, if you
didn't?"

"Like nature, I hope, and not like yours,
which might be taken for a bed of gentianella,
or a sample of English cloth, or anything
you please—except a sky; I beg to assure
you, for the tenth time, there is too much
blue!"

"I tell you what, old gentleman," cried the
insulted artist, crossing his maul-stick over
his shoulder, and looking very fierce, " I dare
say you are a very worthy fellow when you
are at home; but you should not be let out—
alone."

"Why not ? "

"Why not? Because you must be crazy to
play the critic after this fashion; too much
blue indeed! What, I, the pupil of Ruysdael,
the third cousin of Gerard Douw's great
grandson, not know how to colour a sky ?
Know that my reputation has been long
established. I have a Red Horse at Malines,
a Green Bear at Namur, and a Charlemagne
at Aix-la-Chapelle, before which every
passenger stops fixed in admiration!"

"Nonsense! " exclaimed the critic, as he
snatched the palette from the painter's hand.
"You deserve to have your own portrait
painted to serve for the sign of the Flemish
Ass! " In his indignation he mounted the
ladder with the activity of a boy, and began
with the palm of his hand to efface the chef
d'oeuvre of Gerard Douw's great grandson's
third cousin.

"Stop! You old charlatan! " shouted the
latter, " You are ruining my sign! Why, it's