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His worst fault was that he was a shrewd observer of men, and drew, in a memorandum book he kept, pen-portraits of the people he met. 'Dr Blair is merely an astonishing proof of what industry and application can do.

Then he will come home, to be made Keeper of the King's Mews, and presently our Colley will immortalise him in one of those pen-portraits which make so many of the Poet Laureate's friends or foes stand out clear and distinct against the background of the "Apology." Here is the picture, fresh and beaming as ever: * Owen Swiney."

During a short conversation with him we had opportunity to observe that in person this "wise, good, and religious" man must, at the time Miss Bronté knew him, have more closely resembled M. Pelet of "The Professor" than any other of her pen-portraits: indeed, after the lapse of more than forty years that delineation still, for the most part, aptly applies to him.

Murray sometimes read aloud descriptions of beautiful scenery, written now among the scoriae of Mauna Roa or Mauna Kea, and now from the pinnacle of Mount Ophir, whence, through waving forests of nutmeg and clove, flashed the blue waters of the Indian Ocean, or the silver ripples of Malacca; and, on such occasions, the orphan listened eagerly, entranced by the tropical luxuriance and grandeur of his imagery, by his gorgeous word- painting, which to her charmed ears seemed scarcely inferior to the wonderful pen-portraits of Ruskin.

Had pen-portraits, such as these, been merely caricatures, they might have been forgiven; but, unfortunately, they were convincing likenesses, therefore libels. We doubt not, as Cunningham tells us, that the literati of Edinburgh were not displeased when such a man left them; they could never feel at their ease so long as he was in their midst.

Among the men of the Revival, no personality is stronger or more attractive than that of G.W. Russell "Æ", as he is always called who may be regarded as the hero of George Moore's Hail and Farewell, and who alone in that gallery of wonderful pen-portraits looks forth with complete amiability.

Perhaps the newest and most refreshing feature of the book is its vivid pen-portraits of the young men and women who have gone out of Tuskegee carrying into diversified lives the principles and precepts imbibed from their parent school.

From the pen-portraits left of him by Gasparino of Verona, and Girolamo Porzio, we know him for a tall, handsome man with black eyes and full lips, elegant, courtly, joyous, and choicely eloquent, of such health and vigour and endurance that he was insensible to any fatigue.

The taste for pen-portraits, which originated in the romances of Mlle. de Scudery, and received a fresh impulse from this novel and personal application, spread rapidly among all classes. It was taken up by men of letters and men of the world, the nobility, and the bourgeoisie.

She confesses that she should like to be the annalist of her country, and longs for the pen of Tacitus, for whom she has a veritable passion. When one reads her sharp, incisive pen-portraits, drawn with such profound insight and masterly skill, one feels that her true vocation was in the world of letters. At the close she verges a little upon the theatrical, as sometimes in her young days.