 Scottish Teniers, as Wilkie has been deservedly styled. He
threw down the brush, took up the crayons, and, amid hunger and toil, and
suspense and uncertainty, pursued the path of his profession under better
auspices than those of his original master. Still the first rude emanations of
his genius (like the nursery rhymes of Pope, could these be recovered) will be
dear to the companions of Dick Tinto's youth. There is a tankard and gridiron
painted over the door of an obscure change-house in the Back-wynd of
Gandercleugh - But I feel I must tear myself from the subject, or dwell on it
too long.
    Amid his wants and struggles, Dick Tinto had recourse, like his brethren, to
levying that tax upon the vanity of mankind which he could not extract from
their taste and liberality - in a word, he painted portraits. It was in this
more advanced state of proficiency, when Dick had soared above his original line
of business, and highly disdained any allusion to it, that, after having been
estranged for several years, we again met in the village of Gandercleugh, I
holding my present situation, and Dick painting copies of the human face divine
at a guinea per head. This was a small premium, yet, in the first burst of
business, it more than sufficed for all Dick's moderate wants; so that he
occupied an apartment at the Wallace Inn, cracked his jest with impunity even
upon mine host himself, and lived in respect and observance with the
chambermaid, hostler, and waiter.
    Those halcyon days were too serene to last long. When his honour the Laird
of Gandercleugh, with his wife and three daughters, the minister, the gauger,
mine esteemed patron Mr. Jedediah Cleishbotham, and some round dozen of the
feuars and farmers, had been consigned to immortality by Tinto's brush, custom
began to slacken, and it was impossible to wring more than crowns and
half-crowns from the hard hands of the peasants, whose ambition led them to
Dick's painting room.
    Still, though the horizon was overclouded, no storm for some time ensued.
Mine host had Christian faith with a lodger, who had been a good paymaster as
long as he had the means. And from a portrait of our landlord himself, grouped
with his wife and daughters, in the style of Rubens, which suddenly appeared in
the best parlour, it was evident that Dick had found some mode of bartering art
for the necessaries of life.
    Nothing, however, is more precarious than resources of this nature. It was
observed
