the side of a fine Volpato.  But, dismissing these, there remain many excellent works of art in a pure style, such as nobody need be ashamed to own, as every candid connoisseur will admit. Candid, observe, I say; for great allowances must be made in these cases; no artist can ever be sure of carrying through his own fine preconception.  Awkward disturbances will arise; people will not submit to have their throats cut quietly; they will run, they will kick, they will bite; and whilst the portrait painter often has to complain of too much torpor in his subject, the artist, in our line, is generally embarrassed by too much animation.  At the same time, however disagreeable to the artist, this tendency in murder to excite and irritate the subject, is certainly one of its advantages to the world in general, which we ought not to overlook, since it favors the development of latent talent.  Jeremy Taylor notices with admiration, the extraordinary leaps which people will take under the influence of fear.  There was a striking instance of this in the recent case of the M’Keands; the boy cleared a height, such as he will never clear again to his dying day.  Talents also of the most brilliant description for thumping, and indeed for all the gymnastic exercises, have sometimes been developed by the panic which accompanies our artists; talents else buried and hid under a bushel to the possessors, as much as to their friends.  I remember an interesting illustration of this fact, in a case which I learned in Germany.

Riding one day in the neighborhood of Munich, I overtook a distinguished amateur of our society, whose name I shall conceal.  This gentleman informed me that, finding himself wearied with the frigid pleasures (so he called them) of mere amateurship, he had quitted England for the continent—­meaning to practise a little professionally.  For this purpose he resorted to Germany, conceiving the police in that part of Europe to be more heavy and drowsy than elsewhere.  His debut as a practitioner took place at Mannheim; and, knowing me to be a brother amateur, he freely communicated the whole of his maiden adventure.  “Opposite to my lodging,” said he, “lived a baker:  he was somewhat of a miser, and lived quite alone.  Whether it were his great expanse of chalky face, or what else, I know not—­but the fact was, I ‘fancied’ him, and resolved to commence business upon his throat, which by the way he always carried bare—­a fashion which is very irritating to my desires.  Precisely at eight o’clock in the evening, I observed that he regularly shut up his windows.  One night I watched him when thus engaged—­bolted in after him—­locked the door—­and, addressing him with great suavity, acquainted him with the nature of my errand; at the same time advising him to make no resistance, which would be mutually unpleasant.  So saying, I drew out my tools; and was proceeding to operate.  But at this spectacle, the baker, who seemed to have been struck by catalepsy