colour, and execution, is a master piece. The gay, lively derision of the other Negro-boy, playing with the Actæon, is an ingenious contrast to the profound amazement of the first. Some account has already been given of the two lovers in this picture. It is curious to observe the infinite activity of mind which the artist displays on every occasion. An instance occurs in the present picture. He has so contrived the papers in the hair of the Bride, as to make them look almost like a wreath of halfblown flowers; while those which he has placed on the head of the musical Amateur very much resemble a chevaux-de-frise of horns, which adorn and fortify the lack-lustre expression and mild resignation of the face beneath.

The Night Scene' is inferior to the rest of the series. The attitude of the Husband, who is just killed, is one in which it would be impossible for him to stand, or even to fall. It resembles the loose pasteboard figures they make for children. The characters in the last picture, in which the wife dies, are all masterly. We would particularly refer to the captious, petulant self-sufficiency of the Apothecary, whose face and figure are constructed on exact physiognomical principles, and to the fine example of passive obedience, and non-resistance in the Servant, whom he is taking to task, and whose coat of green and yellow livery is as long and melancholy as his face. The disconsolate look, the haggard eyes, the open mouth, the comb sticking in the hair, the broken, gapped teeth, which, as it were, hitch in an answer-everything about him denotes the utmost perplexity and dismay. The harmony and gradations of colour in this picture are uniformly preserved with the greatest nicety, and are well worthy the attention of the artist.

We have so far attempted to point out the fund of observation, physical and moral, contained in one set of these pictures, the 'Marriage a-la-Mode.' The rest would furnish as many topics to descant upon, were the patience of the reader as inexhaustible as the painter's invention. But as this is not the case, we shall content ourselves with barely referring to some of those figures in the other pictures, which appear the most striking; and which we see, not only while we are looking at them, but which we have before us at all other times. For in

stance: who, having seen, can easily forget that exquisite frostpiece of religion and morality, the antiquated prude, in the picture of Morning? or that striking commentary on the "good old times," the little appendage of a foot-boy, who crawls, half-famished and half-frozen, behind her? The French man and woman, in the 'Noon,' are the perfection of flighty affectation and studied grimace; the amiable fraternization of the two old women saluting each other, is not enough to be admired; and in the little master, in the same national group, we see the early promise and personification of that eternal principle of wondrous self-complacency proof against all circumstances, which makes the French the only people who are vain, even of being cuckolded and being conquered! Or shall we prefer to this, the outrageous distress and unmitigated terrors of the boy who has dropped his dish of meat, and who seems red all over with shame and vexation, and bursting with the noise he makes? Or what can be better than the good housewifery of the girl underneath, who is devouring the lucky fragments? Or than the plump, ripe, florid, luscious look of the servant-wench, embraced by a greasy rascal of an Othello, with her pye-dish tottering like her virtue, and with the most precious part of its contents running over? Just-no, not quite-as good, is the joke of the woman over head, who, having quarrelled with her husband, is throwing their Sunday's dinner out of the window, to complete this chapter of accidents of baked dishes. The husband, in the 'Evening Scene,' is certainly as meek as any recorded in history; but we cannot say that we admire this picture, or the Night Scene' after it. in High Life,' there is that inimitable pair, differing only in sex, congratulating and delighting one another by "all the mutually reflected charities" of folly and affectation; with the young lady, coloured like a rose, dandling her little, black, pug-faced, white-teethed, chuckling favourite; and with the portrait of M. Des Noyers, in the back ground, dancing in a grand ballet, surrounded by butterflies. And again, in 'The Election Dinner,' is the immortal cobbler, surrounded by his peers, who, "frequent and full,"

But then, in the Taste

"In loud recess and brawling conclave sit!"

the Jew, in the second picture, a very Jew in grain-innumerable fine sketches of heads in the 'Poliing for Votes,' of which the nobleman, overlooking the caricaturist, is the best;-and then the irresistible, tumultuous display of broad humour in the 'Chairing the Member,' which is, perhaps, of all Hogarth's pictures, the most full of laughable incidents and situations. The yellow, rusty-faced thresher, with his swinging flail, breaking the head of one of the chairmen; and his redoubted antagonist, the sailor, with his oak stick, and stumping wooden leg, a supplemental cudgel-the persevering ecstasy of the hobbling blind fiddler, who, in the fray, appears to have been trod upon by the artificial excrescence of the honest tar-Monsieur, the monkey, with piteous aspect, speculating the impending disaster of the triumphant candidate; and his brother Bruin, appropriating the paunch-the precipitous flight of the pigs, souse over head into the water; the fine lady fainting, with vermilion lips; and the two chimney-sweepers, satirical young rogues !—I had almost forgot the politician, who is burning a hole through his hat with a candle in reading a newspaper; and the chickens, in the March to Finchley,' wandering in search of their lost dam, who is found in the pocket of the Serjeant. Of the pictures in the Rake's Progress,' exhibited in this collection, I shall not here say anything, because I think them, on the whole, inferior to the prints, and because they have already been criticised by a writer, to whom I could add nothing, in a paper which ought to be read by every lover of Hogarth and of English genius-I mean, 'Mr. Lamb's Essay on the works of Hogarth.' I shall at present proceed to form some estimate of the yle of art in which this painter excelled.

What distinguishes his compositions from all others of the same general kind, is, that they are equally remote from caricature and from mere still life. It of course happens in subjects taken from common life, that the painter can procure real models, and he can get them to sit as long as he pleases. Hence, in general, those attitudes and expressions have been chosen which could be assumed the longest; and in imitating which, the artist, by taking pains and time, might produce almost as complete fac-similes as he could of a flower or a flower-pot, of a

damask curtain or a china vase. The copy was as perfect and as uninteresting in the one case as in the other. On the contrary, subjects of drollery and ridicule, affording frequent examples of strange deformity and peculiarity of features, these have been eagerly seized by another class of artists, who, without subjecting themselves to the laborious drudgery of the Dutch school and their imitators, have produced our popular caricatures, by rudely copying or exaggerating the casual irregularities of the human countenance. Hogarth has equally avoided the faults of both these styles; the insipid tameness of the one, and the gross extravagance of the other, so as to give to the productions of his pencil equal solidity and effect. For his faces go to the very verge of caricature, and yet never (I believe in any single instance) go beyond it: they take the very widest latitude, and yet we always see the links which bind them to nature: they bear all the marks, and carry all the conviction of reality with them, as if we had seen the actual faces for the first time, from the precision, consistency, and good sense with which the whole and every part is made out. They exhibit the most uncommon features, with the most uncommon expressions; but which yet are as familiar and intelligible as possible, because, with all the boldness, they have all the truth of nature. Hogarth has left behind him as many of these memorable faces, in their memorable moments, as, perhaps, most of us remember in the course of our lives, and has thus doubled the quantity of our experience.

It will assist us in forming a more determinate idea of the peculiar genius of Hogarth, to compare him with a deservedly admired artist in our own times. The highest authority on art in this country, I understand, has pronounced that Mr. Wilkie united the excellencies of Hogarth to those of Teniers. I demur to this decision in both its branches: but in demurring to authority it is necessary to give our reasons. I conceive that this ingenious and attentive observer of nature has certain essential, real, and indisputable excellencies of his own; and I think it, therefore, the less important to clothe him with any vicarious merits which do not belong to him. Mr. Wilkie's pictures, generally speaking, derive almost their whole value from their

reality, or the truth of the representation. They are works of pure imitative art; and the test of this style of composition is to represent nature faithfully and happily in its simplest combinations. It may be said of an artist like Mr. Wilkie, that nothing human is indifferent to him. His mind takes an interest in, and it gives an interest to, the most familiar scenes and transactions of life. He professedly gives character, thought, and passion, in their lowest degrees, and in their every-day forms. He selects the commonest events and appearances of nature for his subjects; and trusts to their very commonness for the interest and amusement he is to excite. Mr. Wilkie is a serious, prosaic, literal narrator of facts; and his pictures may be considered as diaries, or minutes of what is passing constantly about us. Hogarth, on the contrary, is essentially a comic painter; his pictures are not indifferent, unimpassioned, transcripts of incidental scenes or customs, or descriptions of human nature, but rich, exuberant moral satires, exposing vice and folly in their most ludicrous points of view, and, with a profound insight into the weak sides of character and manners in all their tendences, combinations, and contrasts. There is not a single picture of his containing a representation of merely natural or domestic scenery. He is carried away by a passion for the ridiculous. His object is not so much to hold the mirror up to nature" as "to show vice her own feature, scorn her own image." He is so far from contenting himself with still-life that he is always on the verge of caricature, though without ever falling into it. He does not represent folly or vice in its incipient, or dormant, or grub state; but full-grown, with wings, pampered into all sorts of affectation, airy, ostentatious, and extravagant. Folly is there seen at the height-the moon is at the full; it is "the very error of the time." There is a perpetual collision of eccentricities—a tilt and tournament of absurdities; the prejudices and caprices of mankind are let loose, and set together by the ears, as in a beargarden. Hogarth paints nothing but comedy or tragi-comedy. Wilkie paints neither one nor the other. Hogarth never looks at any object but to find out a moral or a ludicrous effect. Wilkie never looks at any object but to see that it is there. Hogarth's pictures are a perfect jest-book from one end to the other.