the next day but one; they then began to talk of art. ’I'll stick to the heroic’ said the painter; 'I now and then dabble in the comic, but what I do gives me no pleasure—the comic is low; there is nothing like the heroic. I am engaged here on a heroic picture,' said he, pointing to the canvas; 'the subject is Pharaoh dismissing Moses from Egypt. That finished figure is Moses.' The picture was not far advanced; as I gazed upon it, it appeared to me that there was something defective—something unsatisfactory in the figure.
"We presently afterwards departed. My brother talked much about the painter. 'He is a noble fellow,' said my brother, 'but, like many other noble fellows, has a great many enemies; he is hated by his brethren of the brush but above all, the race of portrait painters detest him for his heroic tendencies. It will be a kind of triumph to the last when they hear he has condescended to paint a portrait; however, that Norman arch will enable him to escape from their malice. … By the by, do you not think that figure of Moses is somewhat short?' And then it appeared to me that I had thought the figure of Moses somewhat short, and I told my brother so.
"On the morrow my brother departed with the painter for the old town, and there the painter painted the mayor. The mayor was a mighty, portly man, with a bull's head, black hair, body like that of a dray-horse, and legs and thighs corresponding—a man six foot high at the least. To his bull's head, black hair, and body, the painter had done justice; there was one point, however, in which the portrait did not correspond with the original the legs were disproportionably short, the painter having substituted his own legs for those of the mayor.
"Short legs in a heroic picture will never do; and,
