" But to be called on to act in that Slavery question,
the one in which he knew (as all sensible Americans do) that the life
and death of his country depended, and which for that very reason he
had carefully ignored till a more convenient season, finding in
its very difficulty and danger an excuse for leaving it to solve
itself:--to have this thrust on him, and by her, as the price of the
thing which he must have, or die! If she had asked for his right hand,
he would have given it sooner; and he entered the Royal Academy that
day in much the same humour as that of a fine lady who should find
herself suddenly dragged from the ball-room into the dust-hole, in her
tenderest array of gauze and jewels, and there peremptorily compelled
to sift the cinders, under the superintendence of the sweep and the
pot-boy.
Glad to escape from questions which he had rather not answer too
soon, he went in search of Claude, and found him before one of those
pre-Raphaelite pictures, which Claude does not appreciate as he ought.
"Desinit in Culicem mulier formosa superne," said Stangrave, as he
looked over Claude's shoulder; "but I suppose he followed nature, and
copied his model."
"That he didn't," said Claude, "for I know who his model was: but if
he did he had no business to do so. I object on principle to these
men's notion of what copying nature means. I don't deny him talent.
I am ready to confess that there is more imagination and more honest
work in that picture than in any one in the room.
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