‘Now I’m furnished,’" hummed the Baron. “‘Now I’m furnished’-with several books for my journey, and-” “Tickets, please,” broke in the inspector. “Just when I was comfortable,” growled the Baron; “but no matter. And now for the Pen and Pencil Sketches.” [“Little Billee.”] “Little Billee.” The father of Mr. Stacy Marks predestined him for the coach-building business. Providence, interposing, made him a painter, and the gaiety of nations has been increased by the possession of some storks. In Pen and Pencil Sketches (Chatto and Windus) he has given the world some reminiscences of a career justly crowned by the laurels of the Royal Academy. The work is in two volumes, and my Baronite says would have been more than twice as good had it been in one. The first volume is charming, with its chat about Leigh’s studio and the men met there; of Charles Keene and the delightful cruise off Gravesend in the William and Mary; of merry days with the St. John’s Wood clique; of nights at Arthur Lewis’s; and of days with Fred Walker. When the flood of memory runs dry, and there still remains a second volume to be produced, Mr. Marks grows desperate, and shovels in anything he finds handy in the pigeon-holes of his desk. Thus the pleased reader finds reprinted articles that appeared in the Spectator thirty years ago, when Mr. Marks was art critic to that respectable journal. Also there is a description of Bampton, which once thrilled the readers of the Tiverton Gazette. This gives to the second volume something of the smell of an apple store-room. But the first is good enough to atone for the burden of the second. By a happy coincidence, whilst Mr. Du Maurier in Trilby has made all the world in love with Little Billee, he appears under his own name in many of Mr. Marks’pages, and is always the same charming, simple-minded, sensitive man of genius. It is pleasant to read how our Mr. Agnew-“William” the wise call him-gave the young painter his first substantial lift. Walker had painted
