I never knew him more racy; he gave us biographies, mostly imaginary, illustrated by sketches, made in the intervals of eating, of the sitters whose portraits he has condescended to take this year.

They range from a bishop and a royalty down to a little girl picked up in the London streets, and his presentation of the characteristic attitudes of each--those attitudes which, according to him, betray the "inner soul" of the bishop or the foundling--was admirable.

Then he fell upon the Academy--that respected body of which I suppose he will soon be the President--and tore it limb from limb.

With what face I shall ever sit at the same table with him at the Academy dinners of the future--supposing fortune ever exalts me again as she did this year to that august meal--I hardly know.

Millais's faces, Pettie's knights, or Calderon's beauties--all fared the same.