picture after her condemnation, I suspect his observation to resemble those prophecies which are made after the completion of events they professed to foretel. She has a locked-up mouth, wide nostrils, and a penetrating eye, with a general air that indicates close observation and masculine courage; but I do not discover either depravity or cruelty; though her conduct in this, as well as some other horrible transactions, evinced an uncommon portion of both, and proved her a Lady Macbeth in low life."

When Sarah sat to Hogarth, "she had put on red to look the better." This portrait was in the Green Closet, at Strawberry Hill; a copy of it was in the possession of Alderman Boydell it was engraved, and from the print were four copies, besides one in wood, which was engraved for the Gentleman's Magazine. "Thus eager were the public," says Ireland, "to possess the portait of this most atrocious woman.' Walpole calls her "a washerwoman," which, doubtless, arose from his mistaking the designation of laundress, a woman who has the care of chambers, for a washer of clothes. It is true that her picture was admitted into the Strawberry-hill collection; but Walpole rightly estimated Sarah's notoriety, though he places her in great company, and writes, some fifteen years after, (1748):

"Projectors make little noise here; and even any one who only has made a noise, is forgotten as soon as out of sight! The knaves and fools of to-day are too numerous to leave room to talk of yesterday. The pains that people, who have a mind to be named, are forced to take to be very particular, would convince you how difficult it is to make a lasting impression on such a town as this. * * * Lord Bolingbroke, Sarah Malcolm, and old Marlborough, are never mentioned by their elderly folks to their grandchildren, who had never heard of them."-Letters, vol. ii. p. 104.

*

Another portrait of this class is that of Miss Blandy, who was executed at Oxford in 1762, for poisoning her father. The drawing, which is in every way worthy of Hogarth's pencil, was in the collection of the Duke of Buckingham at Stowe it is in Indian-ink wash. She is represented in her prison cell, sitting at a round table, her left hand resting on a sheet of paper, and holding a pen, as if in the act of writing, although her countenance is turned towards the spectator: Nichols asks: "Was she left-handed?"

Hogarth next painted Elizabeth Canning, whose fabricated story of being seized under Bedlam wall, partly stripped, and carried to Enfield Wash, and there shut up in a room, and

kept upon bread and water, for many months turned the heads of the town, and produced a shoal of pamphlets, prints, and caricatures. Canning confessed the imposture, and was tried, and condemned to transportation: Hogarth painted her while she was in prison, and the portrait is in the Mulgrave collection.

DEATH OF SIR JAMES THORNHILL.

In 1734, Hogarth lost his father-in-law, Sir James Thornhill, whom he designated in the obituary of the Gentleman's Magazine "the greatest history-painter this Kingdom ever produced: witness his elaborate works in Greenwich Hospital, the cupola of St. Paul's, the altar-pieces of All Souls' College in Oxford, and the church in Weymouth, where he was born. He was not only by patents appointed historypainter to their late and present majesties, but sergeantpainter, by which he was to paint all the royal palaces, coaches, barges, and the royal navy. This late patent he surrendered in favour of his only son John. He left no other issue but one daughter, now the wife of Mr. William Hogarth, admired for his curious miniature conversation pieces."

Thornhill was generous with his pencil: he painted the Court of Aldermen, at the Guildhall, London, with allegorical figures of Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude; in return for which the Corporation presented the artist with a gold cup, value 2251. 7s.

Sir James designed for the Chelsea China-factory; and Walpole had, at Strawberry Hill, a dozen plates by Thornhill, which he purchased at Mrs. Hogarth's sale, in Leicestersquare. Panton Betew, the silversmith of Hogarth's time, and a dealer in works of art, related the following as the cause of the breaking up of the Chelsea china works, in a conversation with Nollekens :—“ -“Ay! that was a curious failure, the cunning rogues produced very white and delicate ware, but then they had their clay from China; which when the Chinese found out, they would not let the captains have any more clay for ballast, and the consequence was, that the whole concern failed." Nollekens once asked Panton Betew, if he knew where the Chelsea china factory stood? To which Betew replied, "Upon the site of Lord Dartery's house, just beyond the bridge."

Thornhill lived in a large house behind No. 104, St. Martin'slane he painted the staircase with subjects of allegory; the

pictures long remained upon the walls, in excellent condition, as they have never been cleaned. In this house subsequently lived the junior Van Nost, the sculptor, who took the famous mask of Garrick from his face. After Van Nost, Frank Hayman lived in this house; and then Sir Joshua Reynolds, previous to his knighthood, and before he went to live in the house now No. 5, on the north side of Great Newport-street, whence he removed to Leicester-fields.

Upon the site of the present Friends', or Quakers' meetinghouse, in St. Peter's-court, stood the first studio of Roubilliac, the sculptor; there, amongst other works, he executed his famous statue of Handel, for Vauxhall Gardens. The studio was, upon Roubilliac leaving it, fitted up as a subscription drawing academy, Mr. Michael Moser being appointed keeper. Hogarth was much against this establishment, though he presented to it several casts, and other articles, which had been the property of his father-in-law, Sir James Thornhill. He declared that it was the surest way to bring artists to beggary, by rendering their education as easy as one guinea and a half and two guineas, per quarter.

MIDNIGHT MODERN CONVERSATION.

In this famous piece, painted by Hogarth in 1735, most of the figures are portraits. It is a picture of thorough jollity. Around a table are some dozen persons, talking, swearing, singing, falling, sleeping, smoking, swilling, and huzzaing "like mad." The president of the orgy is a priest, whom, Sir Hawkins says, is Orator Henley; but Mrs. Piozzi asserts he is no other person than Parson Ford, a near relative of Dr. Johnson, and a very profligate fellow. Although his companions are falling about him, he sits, pipe in hand, using a corkscrew as a tobacco-stopper.* The figure leaning over the Parson is John Harrison, a tobacconist from Bell-yard; the lawyer, Kettleby, a vociferous barrister; the man in the

* This association of the priest and the corkscrew is traced to the following anecdote related by Lord Sandwich. "I was in company where there were ten persons, and I made a wager privately and won it, that among them was not one prayer-book. I then offered to lay another wager, that among the ten persons there were half-a-score of corkscrews-it was accepted; the better received his instructions, pretended to break his corkscrew, and requested any gentleman to lend him one, when each priest pulled a corkscrew from his pocket. A dispute was got up as to some point in the Liturgy, when a prayerbook was asked for, and not one of the priests had one."

nightcap, old Chandler, a bookbinder from Shire-lane. The jolly party have emptied twenty-three flasks, and the twentyfourth is being decanted. Even the timepiece is infected with the fume of the liquor, for the hour and minute hands do not agree.

This picture was presented by Hogarth to Mr. Rich, of Covent-garden theatre; his widow left it to her nephew, General Wilford, who gave it to the grand-daughter of Rich, who bequeathed it to William Wightman, Esq., of Hampstead. In the Egremont collection at Petworth, is a copy of this picture; another (says Ireland) was found in an inn in Gloucestershire, and passed into the hands of J. Calverley, Esq., of Leeds; a sketch was sold at John Ireland's sale, in 1810, for 67.; and in 1817, this picture, or another sketch, was in the hands of Mr. Gwennap, and thence passed into Lord Northwick's collection at Cheltenham, dispersed in 1859.

The print was very popular: in the British Museum is an impression of the plate in its first state, printed with red ink; it was copied by Kirkhall and Ripenhausen. There is a very large copy, 2 ft. 11 in. wide by 22 inches high, published by John Bowles, at the Black Horse, Cornhill: on each side of the title are numerous verses. The bon-vivant Duke of Norfolk possessed a copy, which, in 1816, was sold to Molteno, of Pall Mall.

The clever heads in the Midnight Conversation, were engraved in two small plates by Ripenhausen, and published, with a French description, in 1786; and a French copy was engraved by Creite. Indeed, the fame of print and picture seems to have been co-extensive with the love of drink. It is considered in France and Germany the best of all Hogarth's single works.

It will be seen by reference to a future page, that one of the wall-paintings discovered in the Elephant, in Fenchurchstreet, in 1826, is said to have been Hogarth's first idea of the above picture, but differs from the print.

ORATOR HENLEY.

We are easily led, (says Mr. Wright,) to doubt the morality of a schemer like Henley, and the reports of his contemporaries seem to rank it rather low. Hogarth introduced him in his Midnight Conversation; and in another picture, performing the rites of baptism, but evidently more attentive to the beauty of the mother than to the operation he is per

forming on the child. Another rough sketch by Hogarth represents in burlesque the interior of the Oratory in Clare Market during service. The Orator's fame, however, was so great, that several engravings were made of him, holding forth from his pulpit, enriched with velvet and gold.-(England under the House of Hanover, vol. i. p. 107.)

A COFFEE-ROOM SCENE.

A good and characteristic conversation piece by Hogarth, was sold by auction in June, 1856. It was from Mr. Barwell Coles's collection, and is a true piece, with four life-size figures, over a bowl of bunch. The scene is evidently in Old Slaughter's Coffee-house, St. Martin's-lane; the persons represented are Dr. Mounsey, Slaughter himself, and it is said, Hogarth. The heads are well painted, and the whole picture is full of character.

"THE HARLOT'S PROGRESS."

Hogarth commenced painting this series of six pictures in 1731, and published the plates engraved from them in 1734. They were the first great work in which his genius became conspicuously known. "This," says Cunningham, "is no burlesque production nor jesting matter-it exhibits, in the midst of humour and satire, a moral pathos which saddens the heart." The boldness and originality of the conception of the satiric story, and the literal force with which the fashionable follies and corruptions of the age are shown up in these pictures, extended as their effect was by engraving, administered many a severe reproof to the actors in those scenes of profligacy with which the London life of the period abounded. Hitherto, painters had invested their moralities with the grace of classic fable and what may be termed the varnish of allegory. Hogarth disdained such affectations, and in their place gave us portraits of the vicious and the vile in the several stages of their infamy. The chief agents are portraits of notorieties of the day. The debauchee, in the first scene of the series, is Colonel Charteris, whom Pope had already "damned to everlasting fame," and who is here, to use Cunningham's words, "pilloried to everlasting infamy." Kate Hackabout, the frail heroine, was committed to Bridewell in 1730 her brother was hung at Tyburn. The procuress, Mother Needham, be-patched and sanctified looking, was sent

: