make but a sorry figure in a photograph, may be what is commonly termed "done something with" in oil colour. Of course, the author, in order to make a good picture, must be what is called "popular;" and no author can be truly popular, in the usual sense of the word, unless his hair is in ringlets, and his neck free from the ordinary trammels of an every-day shirt-collar. Why an exposed throat should be a mark of genius, it is difficult to say; but, in these days, if an author wishes to be fashionable, he must have nothing on his neck, and thus realise the old notion that, in the race for reputation, it is literally "neck or nothing.".

Some persons have their portraits taken to please themselves, and others to please their friends; but occasionally an artist has the opportunity of displaying his abilities on a local lion or a parochial patriot.

The local lion is the scientific character of the district in which he resides; whose portrait has been drawn to

carried him several times to the Goodwin Sands, a mystery which, if he continues his researches, he may one day get to the bottom of. His essay on the natural formation of grouts at the bottom of tea or breakfast-cups, is said to be (in its way) a masterpiece.

The parochial patriot is a guardian of the poor, who has earned the gratitude of the rate-payers, by a discovery of the minimum amount of food a pauper may exist upon. He has saved the parish something in provisions, though, it is true, there has been an increase in the expense of pauper burials. His portrait, taken at the request of his

fellow-guardians, is drawn in the position he used to assume when explaining the provisions of the Poor-law to those who were refused any provisions under it.

Some portraits are remarkable for the imagination that the artist has thrown into them, and the skill with which the real and the romantic are sometimes made to blend is worthy of the highest admiration. Barristers who have never been on their legs in court are, by a vigorous effort of fancy, represented in the act of holding a brief; and jewellery, which they never possessed, is lavishly bestowed on individuals who have stipulated for it in the price of the portrait. The artist's imagination will transfer a boarding-school young lady to the sea-shore, where she

We have here the artist's own portrait, painted in a fit of desperation at having nothing else to do, and intended for the Exhibition, in the hope that the specimen may act as an advertisement of the exhibitor's abilities. Of course the back ground presents a quantity of unfinished pictures, for none are so anxious to appear to be doing

their times for the masquerades, they would possibly have been more grateful, for it is only at these réunions, apart from the drama, that troubadours are now heard or seen, in common with the other graceful costumes of the moyen age, which in a few weeks from the present time will begin to grace the stage of the French Opera-house.

It is a melancholy and degrading truth, that we cannot get up anything like a decent masquerade in England; leaving the Carnival, of course, out of the question. The attempt has been made frequently, and as frequently failed. Low, unmeaning noise, graceless dresses-and worse taste in putting them on-drunken rioting, and vulgar sallies of the coarsest wit (or what is meant for wit), are the chief characteristics of such a meeting in London. Our compatriots are lamentably deficient in the kind of humour required to keep a masquerade going with spirit, and if one of them ventures by chance or curiosity into the maelstrom of a Parisian bal masquè, his gauche bearing betrays him at once. He has no idea of replying to a sprightly sally by

we choose to amuse ourselves with the buffoonery of the poorest amongst the working-classes at the Bal Chicard, or with the splendid costumes of the Academie Royale. It is not want of means to procure handsome or exclusive dresses that causes our own masquerades to be so overdone with Greeks, Turks, brigands, Italian peasants, and Swiss girls. Heaven knows, the poorer inhabitants of Paris are poor indeed; and yet, with the few effects at their disposal, they will contrive to patch up a set of quaint dresses that involuntarily make you smile whilst you look at them. Who among us could convert the elbow-joint of the tin chimney from the domestic stove into a helmet? or con

struct an Oriental turban, grand and imposing in effect, from a bundle of "garden stuff," tied up in part of an old

cotton dress?

There is something very droll in the appearance of the cafés adjoining the French theatres on the night of a bal masquè, from the circumstance of most of the characters quietly walking in, already dressed, to take refreshment before the ball, or wait until the doors are open. For as the pit has generally to be boarded over after the regular performances of the theatre, it is better to seek shelter in