a studio door, and proposes to sit as Ajax defying the lightning, or as King Lear upon the blasted heath.  One of them some time ago called on a popular painter who, happening at the moment to require his services, engaged him, and told him to begin by kneeling down in the attitude of prayer.  ’Shall I be Biblical or Shakespearean, sir?’ asked the veteran.  ‘Well—­Shakespearean,’ answered the artist, wondering by what subtle nuance of expression the model would convey the difference.  ’All right, sir,’ said the professor of posing, and he solemnly knelt down and began to wink with his left eye!  This class, however, is dying out.  As a rule the model, nowadays, is a pretty girl, from about twelve to twenty-five years of age, who knows nothing about art, cares less, and is merely anxious to earn seven or eight shillings a day without much trouble.  English models rarely look at a picture, and never venture on any aesthetic theories.  In fact, they realise very completely Mr. Whistler’s idea of the function of an art critic, for they pass no criticisms at all.  They accept all schools of art with the grand catholicity of the auctioneer, and sit to a fantastic young impressionist as readily as to a learned and laborious academician.  They are neither for the Whistlerites nor against them; the quarrel between the school of facts and the school of effects touches them not; idealistic and naturalistic are words that convey no meaning to their ears; they merely desire that the studio shall be warm, and the lunch hot, for all charming artists give their models lunch.

As to what they are asked to do they are equally indifferent.  On Monday they will don the rags of a beggar-girl for Mr. Pumper, whose pathetic pictures of modern life draw such tears from the public, and on Tuesday they will pose in a peplum for Mr. Phoebus, who thinks that all really artistic subjects are necessarily B.C.  They career gaily through all centuries and through all costumes, and, like actors, are interesting only when they are not themselves.  They are extremely good-natured, and very accommodating.  ‘What do you sit for?’ said a young artist to a model who had sent him in her card (all models, by the way, have cards and a small black bag).  ‘Oh, for anything you like, sir,’ said the girl, ‘landscape if necessary!’

Intellectually, it must be acknowledged, they are Philistines, but physically they are perfect—­at least some are.  Though none of them can talk Greek, many can look Greek, which to a nineteenth-century painter is naturally of great importance.  If they are allowed, they chatter a great deal, but they never say anything.  Their observations are the only banalites heard in Bohemia.  However, though they cannot appreciate the artist as artist, they are quite ready to appreciate the artist as a man.  They are very sensitive to kindness, respect and generosity.  A beautiful model who had sat for two years to one of our most distinguished English painters, got engaged to a street vendor of penny ices.  On her marriage the painter sent her a pretty wedding present, and received in return a nice letter of thanks with the following remarkable postscript:  ’Never eat the green ices!’