CHAPTER 2.II.
Prende, giovine audace e impaziente, L'occasione offerta avidamente.
"Ger.

Lib.," c.vi.

xxix.
(Take, youth, bold and impatient, the offered occasion eagerly.) Clarence Glyndon was a young man of fortune, not large, but easy and independent.

His parents were dead, and his nearest relation was an only sister, left in England under the care of her aunt, and many years younger than himself.

Early in life he had evinced considerable promise in the art of painting, and rather from enthusiasm than any pecuniary necessity for a profession, he determined to devote himself to a career in which the English artist generally commences with rapture and historical composition, to conclude with avaricious calculation and portraits of Alderman Simpkins.