IT CHAPTER I. Wie fruchtbar ist der kleinste Kreis, GOETHE. T was on the evening of a November day that three friends sat about their after-dinner table, chatting over their wine and walnuts, while the fire with its huge log crackled and sparkled, and the wind without moaned about the corners of the house. Everyone is aware that authors have in their studies an unlimited supply of rings of Gyges, coats of darkness, tarn-caps, and other means of invisibility,-that they have the key to every house, and can hear and see words and actions the most remote. Come with me, then, kindly reader, and let us look and listen unseen; we have free leave; and you must know these gentlemen better. First of all, the host. See him leaning back in his chair, and looking into the fire, one hand unconsciously smoothing with restless thumb and finger the taper stem of his wineglass, the other playing with the ears of a favourite dog. He appears about thirty years of age, is tall, but loses something of his real height by a student's stoop about the shoulders. Those decided almost shaggy eyebrows he has would lead you to expect quick, piercing eyes, the eyes of the observant man of action. But now that he looks towards us, you see instead eyes of hazel, large, slow-rolling, often dreamy in their gaze,—such for size and lustre as Homer gives to ox-eyed Juno. The mouth, too, 1 How fruitful may the smallest circle grow, If we the secret of its culture know. and the nose are delicately cut. Their outline indicates taste rather than energy. Yet that massive jaw, again, gives promise of quiet power,-betokens a strength of that sort, most probably, which can persevere in a course once chosen with indomitable steadiness, but is not an agile combative force, inventive in assaults and rejoicing in adventurous leadership. Men of his species resemble fountains, whose water-column a sudden gust of wind may drive aslant, or scatter in spray across the lawn, but the violence once past-they play upward as truly and as strong as ever. Perhaps it is a pity that this Henry Atherton is so rich as he is, owns his Ashfield House, with its goodly grounds, and has never been forced into active professional life, with its rough collisions and straining anxieties. Abundance of leisure is a trial to which few men are equal. Gray was in the right when he said that something more of genius than common was required to teach a man how to employ himself. My friend became early his own task-master, and labours harder from choice than many from necessity. To high attainment as a classical scholar he has added a critical acquaintance with the literature and the leading languages of modern Europe. Upstairs is a noble library, rich especially in historical authorities, and there Atherton works, investigating now one historic question, now another, endeavouring out of old, yellow-faced annals to seize the precious passages which suggest the life of a time, and recording the result of all in piles of manuscript. How often have I and Gower-that youngest of the three, on the other side, with the moustache-urged him to write a book. But he waits, and, with his fastidiousness, will always wait, I am afraid, till he has practically solved this problem ;given a subject in remote history, for which not ten of your friends care a straw; required such a treatment of it as shall at once be relished by the many and accredited as standard by the c. 1.] Lionel Gower. 5 few. So, thinking it useless to write what scarcely anyone will read, and despairing of being ever erudite and popular at the same time, he is content to enquire and to accumulate in most happy obscurity. Doubtless the world groans under its many books, yet it misses some good ones that would assuredly be written if able men with the ambition were oftener possessed of the time required, or if able men with the time were oftener possessed of the ambition. You ask me, 'Who is this Gower?' An artist. Atherton met with him at Rome, where he was tracing classic sites, and Gower worshipping the old masters. Their pathway chanced on one or two occasions to coincide, and by little and little they grew fast friends. They travelled through Germany together on their way home, and found their friendship robust enough to survive the landing on our British shore. Unquestionably the pictured Vatican, sunny Forum, brown Campagna, garlanded baths of Caracalla, with quaint, ingenious Nuremberg, and haunted Hartz, made common memories for both. But this was not all. Atherton had found the young painter in a sentimental fever. He raved about Shelley; he was full of adoration for the flimsiest abstractions -enamoured of impersonations the most impalpable; he discoursed in high strain on the dedication of life as a Hymn to Intellectual Beauty. The question of questions with him concerned not Truth or Fable, but the Beautiful or the NotBeautiful. Whatever charmed his taste was from Ormuzd, the Good whatever revolted it, from Ahriman, the Evil; and so the universe was summarily parted. He fancied he was making art religious, while, in fact, he made religion a mere branch of art,—and that branch, of all others, the most open to individual caprice. : From these wanderings Atherton reclaimed him, wisely, and therefore almost insensibly. Gower never forgot the service. In his admiration for Atherton, when fully conscious of it, he little suspected that he, too, had conferred a benefit in his turn. Atherton had looked too much within, as Gower too exclusively without. A certain imaginative, even poetical element, dormant in the mind of the former, was resuscitated by this friendship. Gower rejoices in the distressingly novelish Christian name. of Lionel. Why will parents give names to their offspring which are sure to entail ridicule during the most susceptible period of existence? No sooner did young Lionel enter school, with that delicate red-and-white complexion, and long curling hair, than he was nicknamed Nelly. But he fought his way stoutly till he won a title from the first part of his name rather than the last, and in school traditions figures still as Lion, royally grim and noble. That open countenance and high forehead, with the deep piercing eyes set rather far apart, constitute not merely a promising physiognomy for the artist, they bear faithful witness to mental power and frankness of character, to practical sagacity and force. In one respect only can he be charged with asserting in his person his professional pretensions, his hair is parted in the middle, falling in natural waves on either side; long enough, as your eye tells you, for grace; too short for affectation. One quality in Gower I have always especially liked,—his universality. Not that he sets up for Encyclopædism; on the contrary, he laments more than he need the scantiness of his knowledge and his want of time for its enlargement. What I mean is that with every kind of enquiry, every province of culture, he seems to have intuitively the readiest sympathy. Though his notion of the particular art or science may be only cursory and general, his imagination puts him in some way in the place of its exclusive devotees, and he enters into their feelings till their utmost worship appears scarcely excessive to him. I have heard such votaries pour out unreservedly into c. 1.] Frank Willoughby. 7 his ear, as into that of a brother enthusiast, all those delightful details of adventure, of hope and fear, of research and of conjecture, which make the very life of the most minute or the most arid pursuits, and which books impart to us so rarely. And all this (making the world to him such a wide one) without taking aught from his allegiance to painting. Already have his genius and his diligence achieved success-you will find his pictures realizing high prices-and that snug little box of his, only ten minutes' walk from Ashfield, is furnished much too handsomely to accord with the popular idea of what must be the residence of a young artist, five-and-twenty, but newly started in his profession, and with all his 'expectations' gathered up within his brush. "The third member of the trio, Mr. Author, has not certainly the personal advantages of our friend Gower. I suppose you expect me to say 'our' now, if only as a compliment. Yet stay -a very expressive face, with a genial hearty look about it ;there! now he is smiling, that rather clumsy mouth is quite pleasant; but he lets too much beard grow for my taste.' Bearded Willoughby, O Reader, is a literary man, a confirmed bachelor, they say; and encrusted with some roughnesses and oddities which conceal from the eyes of strangers his real warmth of heart and delicacy of feeling. His parents destined him for the Church from those tender years wherein the only vocation manifest is that which summons boyhood to peg-top and jam tart. When the time drew near in which he should have taken orders, Willoughby went up to London, brimful of eager philanthropy, of religious doubts, and of literary ambition, to become one of the High-priests of Letters. His first work was a novel to illustrate the mission of the literary Priesthood, a topsy-turvy affair, but dashingly clever-by the way, you can scarcely offend him more than to mention it now ;-with this book he succeeded in producing a sensation, and the |