It was a very warm morning in the Via Colonna, for many weeks had passed, and May was coming on: it was a warm morning, and Hiram was plodding away drearily by himself at his heroic picture of the Capture of Babylon, with a stalwart young Roman from the Campagna sitting for his model of the Persian leader, when the door unexpectedly opened, and a quiet-looking old gentleman entered suddenly, alone and unannounced. This was one of Hiram\'s days of deepest despondency, and he was heartily sorry for the untimely interruption. \'Mr. Churchill sent me to look at your pictures.\' the stranger said in explanation, in a very soft, pleasant voice. \'He told me I might possibly see some things here that were really worth the looking at.\'

Poor Hiram sighed somewhat wearily. \'Churchill has too good an opinion altogether of my little attempts,\' he said in all sincerity.

\'I\'m afraid you\'ll find very little here that\'s worthy your attention. May I venture to ask your name?\'

\'Never mind my name, sir,\' the old gentleman said, with a blandness that contrasted oddly with the rough wording of his brusque sentences. \'Never you mind my name, I say,—what\'s that to you, pray? My name\'s not at all in question. I\'ve come to see your pictures.\'

\'Are you a dealer, perhaps?\' Hiram suggested, with another sigh at his own excessive frankness in depreciating what was after all his bread and butter—and a great deal more to him. \'You want to buy possibly?

\'No, I don\'t want to buy,\' the old gentleman answered flatly, with a certain mild and kindly fierceness. \'I don\'t want to buy certainly. I\'m not a dealer; I\'m an art-critic.\'

\'Oh, indeed,\' Hiram said politely. The qualification is not one usually calculated to endear a visitor to a struggling young artist.

\'And you, I should say by your accent, are an American. That\'s bad, to begin with. What on earth induced you to leave that cursed country of yours? Oh generation of vipers—don\'t misinterpret that much-mistaken word generation; it means merely son or offspring—who has warned you to flee from the wrath that is?\'

Hiram smiled in spite of himself. \'Myself,\' he said; \'my own inner prompting only.\'

\'Ha, that\'s better; so you fled from it.

You escaped from the city of destruction. You saved yourself from Sodom and Gomorrah. Well, well, having had the misfortune to be born an American, what better thing could you possibly do? Creditable, certainly, very creditable. And now, since you have come to Rome to paint, pray what sort of wares have you got to show me?\'

Hiram pointed gravely to the unfinished Capture of Babylon.

\'It won\'t do,\' the old gentleman said decisively, after surveying the principal figures with a critical eye through his double eyeglass. \'Oh, no, it won\'t do at all. It\'s painted—I admit that; it\'s painted, solidly painted, which is always something nowadays, when coxcombs go splashing their brushes loosely about a yard or two of blank canvas, and then positively calling it a picture. It\'s painted, there\'s no denying it. Still, my dear sir, you\'ll excuse my saying so, but there\'s really nothing in it—absolutely nothing. What does it amount to, after all? A line farrago of tweedledum and tweedledee, in Assyrian armour and Oriental costume, and other unnatural, incongruous upholsterings, with a few Roman models stuck inside it all, to do duty instead of lay figures. Do you really mean to tell me, now, you think that was what the capture of Babylon actually looked like? Why, my dear sir, speaking quite candidly, I assure you, for my own part I much prefer the Assyrian bas-reliefs.\'

Hiram\'s heart sank horribly within him. He knew it, he knew it; it was all an error, a gigantic error. He had mistaken a taste for painting for a genius for painting. He would never, never, never make a painter; of that he was now absolutely certain. He could have sat down that moment with his face between his hands and cried bitterly, even as he had done years before when the deacon left him in the peppermint lot, but for the constraining presence of that mild-mannered ferocious oddly-compounded old gentleman.

\'Is this any better?\' he asked humbly, pointing with his brush-handle to the Second Triumvirate.

\'No sir, it is not any better,\' the relentless critic answered as fiercely yet as blandly as ever. \'In fact, if it comes to that, it\'s a great deal worse. Look at it fairly in the face and ask yourself what it all comes to. It\'s a group of three amiable sugar-brokers in masquerade costume discussing the current price-lists, and it isn\'t even painted, though it\'s by way of being finished, I suppose, as people paint nowadays. Is that drawing, for example,\' and he stuck his forefinger upon young C?sar\'s foreshortened foot, \'or that, or that, or that, or that, sir? Oh, no, no; dear me, no. This is nothing like either drawing or colouring. The figure, my dear sir—you\'ll excuse my saying so, but you haven\'t the most rudimentary conception even of drawing or painting the human figure.\'

Hiram coincided so heartily at that moment in this vigorous expression of adverse opinion, that but for Gwen he could have pulled out his pocket-knife on the spot and made a brief end of a l............