When they are tired a wise artist gives them a rest.  Then they sit in a chair and read penny dreadfuls, till they are roused from the tragedy of literature to take their place again in the tragedy of art.  A few of them smoke cigarettes.  This, however, is regarded by the other models as showing a want of seriousness, and is not generally approved of.  They are engaged by the day and by the half-day.  The tariff is a shilling an hour, to which great artists usually add an omnibus fare.  The two best things about them are their extraordinary prettiness, and their extreme respectability.  As a class they are very well behaved, particularly those who sit for the figure, a fact which is curious or natural according to the view one takes of human nature.  They usually marry well, and sometimes they marry the artist.  For an artist to marry his model is as fatal as for a gourmet to marry his cook:  the one gets no sittings, and the other gets no dinners.

On the whole the English female models are very naive, very natural, and very good-humoured.  The virtues which the artist values most in them are prettiness and punctuality.  Every sensible model consequently keeps a diary of her engagements, and dresses neatly.  The bad season is, of course, the summer, when the artists are out of town.  However, of late years some artists have engaged their models to follow them, and the wife of one of our most charming painters has often had three or four models under her charge in the country, so that the work of her husband and his friends should not be interrupted.  In France the models migrate en masse to the little seaport villages or forest hamlets where the painters congregate.  The English models, however, wait patiently in London, as a rule, till the artists come back.  Nearly all of them live with their parents, and help to support the house.  They have every qualification for being immortalised in art except that of beautiful hands.  The hands of the English model are nearly always coarse and red.

As for the male models, there is the veteran whom we have mentioned above.  He has all the traditions of the grand style, and is rapidly disappearing with the school he represents.  An old man who talks about Fuseli is, of course, unendurable, and, besides, patriarchs have ceased to be fashionable subjects.  Then there is the true Academy model.  He is usually a man of thirty, rarely good-looking, but a perfect miracle of muscles.  In fact he is the apotheosis of anatomy, and is so conscious of his own splendour that he tells you of his tibia and his thorax, as if no one else had anything of the kind.  Then come the Oriental models.  The supply of these is limited, but there are always about a dozen in London.  They are very much sought after as they can remain immobile for hours, and generally possess lovely costumes.  However, they have a very poor opinion of English art, which they regard as something between a vulgar personality and a commonplace