AN UNAPPRECIATED CRITIC.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1807, 5 December 1879, Page 3

AN UNAPPRECIATED CRITIC.

L" Rockland Courier,""!

An escaped Italian artist was industriously engaged in placing a fresco of whitewash upon the fence of a north-end ro3idence, when a man who had looked bo long upon the bloom on the rye that the cheerful color had been imparted to his nose, sauntered up the street. As he was making a tour of America on foot, and had a few minutes to 3pare, he leaned carelessly over the fence and watched the frescoei's operations.

" How gracefully he applies the dazzling mixture of aqueous fl.iid and lime," Slid the man aloud, as if to himself. The artist raised his head, took in at a glance the seedy clothes and general bankrupt appearance of the man, and then resumed his work,

" There is the grace of Angelo in the play of that aim as it wields the brush," continued the man, in affected admiration.

The artist turned red in the face, but as he was then striving to paint around an iron stanchion, he didn't look up. " The genius of a Raphael lights up that countenance, while the enthusiasm of a Murillo flaaheß from that eaglo eye," pur sued the man,

One of the artist's eyes was game, and considering this remark somewhat personal in its bearings, he growled out—" What are you givin' us, anyhow, you beer-jug? " "Is not that last effort a reproduction of Turner's great masterpiece 1 " exclaimed the man, striking an attitude ; "or do my eyes deceive mn ?"

"They'll deceive you pretty soon, when I knock 'em both into one,'' said the artist, scowling fiercely at the mill, " And if I am not mistaken," pursued the man, making an opera glass of both of his hand, " upon yonder panel I behold an exact reproduction of an exquisite Rubens that I once examined in the Vatican."

" In gaol, more like," said the artist, the -abort hair on the back of his neck standing out horizontally with anger. " Git off'n that fence an' move along, or I'll paint that blossoming nose till your own mother wouldn't know it."

"Descendant of the men who improved nature on canvaa, do not let your passionate" began the man, when the artist caught him across the face with the brush, covering him with the whitened mixture.

The man promptly jumpsd over the fence, and a fierce engagement too'i place, in which the brush did active service. When the whitewash of battle finally cleared away, the artist's head was jammed into the pail as if in search of a portion of his left ear, which wag missing, while the man, with the artist's coat and hat in his hand, was proceeding swiftly up the street, his back ornamented with a facsimile copy of Napoleon crossing the Alpp, while his fiaiy nose looked out through three layera of lime like a naming messenger of truth.