out of the world in undergoing the sentence of being pilloried in Park-lane, when she was so roughly handled by the mob that she survived but a few days.

Then, with what characteristic accuracy are the accessories of the pictures chosen: in the second plate, the sign, Pontac's head, alludes to the purveyor who kept the celebrated eatinghouse in Abchurch-lane; the hat-box in the third plate, is James Dalton's, a notorious street-robber; the pictures are Dr. Sacheverel and Captain Macheath-the Beggar's Opera being just then in full run; and in the sixth plate the parson is chaplain of the Fleet Prison, scandalous for its marriages; and the principal female, Elizabeth Adams, was executed for robbery in 1737.

Of a higher class is the Justice in the third plate, this being Sir John Gonson, who was indefatigable in hunting up thieves and profligates, and is here entering the house of the Harlot. Gonson was distinguished for the extravagance of his addresses to Grand Juries; they were composed, it is said, by Orator Henley, of the Gilt-Tub, and Sir John's voice did not escape the satire of Pope:

"Talkers I've heard; Motteaux I knew;

Henley himself I've heard, and Budgell too,

The doctor's wormwood style, the hash of tongues
A pedant makes, the storm of Gonson's lungs."

The accuracy of the likeness of Sir John Gonson had much to do with the sudden popularity of the Harlot's Progress. Nichols relates that at a Board of Treasury, which was held a day or two after the appearance of the third scene, a copy was shown by one of the Lords, as containing; among other excellencies, a striking likeness of Sir John Gonson. It gave universal satisfaction: from the Treasury each lord repaired to the print-shop for a copy of it; and Hogarth rose completely into fame. This anecdote was related by Christopher Tilson, one of the chief clerks in the Treasury, and at that period under-secretary of state.

The fourth Plate admirably represents a scene in Bridewell : men and women are beating hemp under the eye of a savage taskmaster, and a lad too idle to work is seen standing on tiptoe, to reach the stocks, in which his hands are fixed, while over his head is written, "Better to work than stand thus !"

In the fifth Plate, the fat and lean physicians, who are squabbling beside the expiring sinner, are also portraits: the

meagre practitioner is Dr. Misaubin, the Flemish Quack;* his fat adversary is an English worthy of the same stamp— either Dr. Rock or Dr. Ward: an old nostrum of the latter is in sale to this day. The apartment is the large room in the house of the famous Dr. Misaubin,† now No. 96, St. Martin's-lane; and in the picture are portraits of the Doctor and his Irish wife. This plate of Hogarth's, which has never been understood by collectors of that artist's works, has been explained thus: The Rake, who has accompanied the girl to whom Dr. Misaubin had given his vicious pills, is threatening to cane him. The Doctor's wife, who has been cleaning a lancet after a recent operation, eyes the Rake with a full determination to enforce her vengeance, should he offer to put his threat into execution.

The coffin in the last Plate, is inscribed September 2, 1731. The boy in a corner'winding up his top with so much unpretending insensibility in the plate of the Harlot's Funeral (the only thing in that assembly that is not a hypocrite,) quiets and soothes the mind that has been disturbed at the sight of so much depraved man and woman kind. (C. Lamb.)

The six pictures were sold at Hogarth's auction, in 1715, for 14 guineas each, to Alderman Beckford, who removed them to his seat at Fonthill; and when the mansion was

* Dr. Misaubin, (whose father was a celebrated preacher at the Spitalfields French church,) brought a noted pill into England, by which he realized a large fortune. His son was murdered when returning from Marylebone gardens: the Doctor bequeathed his wealth to his graudson, who dissipated it, and died in St. Martin's workhouse: he supported himself entirely by drinking gin, and died at last for want of it.

Mr. Standley is in possession of an original drawing by Hogarth, containing portraits of Dr. Misaubin and Dr. Ward, which he has had engraved; the plate being destroyed after twelve impressions had been taken.-J. T. Smith, 1828.

Dr. Misaubin's house in St. Martin's-lane was afterwards a colourshop, and the front retained to the last grooves for the shutters to slide in; the street-door frame was of the style of Queen Anne, with a spread eagle, foliage, and flowers curiously and deeply carved in wood over the entrance. Mr. Powel, the colourman, who long inhabited this house, used to say that his mother, for many years, made a pipe of wine from the grapes which grew in the garden, which at that time was nearly 100 feet in length, before the smoke of so many surrounding buildings checked the growth of the vines.

The house has a large and curiously painted staircase, of figures viewing a procession, which was executed for Dr. Misaubin, about 1732, by a French painter named Clermont, who boldly charged one thousand guineas for his labour; but the charge being contested, he was obliged to take five hundred guineas.

burnt in 1755, five of the pictures were consumed; the sixth was saved, and is at Charlemont House, Dublin.

Nichols, in 1833, stated: "Mr. Hall, the police magistrate, of Bow-street, has what he considers to be the first four of the original sketches of the Harlot's Progress: they are in a very rough, obscure, and dirty condition."

For the prints of the Harlot's Progress above 1,200 names were entered in Hogarth's subscription-book. It was made into a pantomime by Theophilus Cibber; and again represented on the stage, under the title of The Jew decoyed, or a Harlot's Progress, in a ballad opera. Fan-mounts were like

wise engraved, containing miniature representations of all the six plates; and it was customary in Hogarth's family, to give these fans to the maid-servants. The Empress of Russia, who highly prized Hogarth's works, had a tea service of cups and saucers with the Harlot's Progress painted on them in China, about the year 1793.

THE RAKE'S PROGRESS.

This admirable series of eight scenes, painted in 1735, each complete in itself, and all telling a domestic story, followed the Harlot's Progress. Walpole says: "The Rake's Progress, though perhaps superior to the Harlot's Progress, had not so much success as the other-from want of novelty; nor is the print of the Arrest equal to the others." The inferiority of the latter plate was felt by Hogarth himself; he tried to improve it, but without success.

Nevertheless, the success of the Rake's Progress must have been great, for it was satisfactory to the artist himself. Their humour, satire, and moral pathos were instantly appreciated. Even Walpole now acknowledged Hogarth's triumph. "The curtain," he says, was now drawn aside, and his genius stood displayed in its full lustre. From time to time he continued these works, which should be immortal if the nature of his work would allow it. Even the receipts for his subscriptions had wit in them. Many of his plates he engraved himself, and often expunged faces etched by his assistants when they had not done justice to his ideas."

In the Rake's Progress, a young man succeeds unexpectedly to the hoards of a sordid miser-from poverty to worldly fortune. "He deserts the woman whom he had wooed, and vowed to marry-starts on a wild career of extravagance, dissipation, and folly-is beset and swindled by speculators

of all kinds, from poets to punks, including rooks, and bucks, and bullies-parades through various haunts of sin and of splendour, till with a fortune dissipated, a constitution ruined, his fame blighted, and his mind touched, he is left raving mad in Bedlam." Many of the actors in these scenes are believed to be portraits. The hero is probably only the impersonation of the vices satirized. Around the head of the antiquated beldam whom Rakewell marries, to support his extravagance, is a halo, which is a shaft at that spiritual school of painting, on which Hogarth looked coldly. The two sedate personages at the gaming-table, are one Manners (of the Rutland family,) to whom the Duke of Devonshire lost the great estate of Leicester Abbey; and a highwayman who sits warming his feet at the fire, waiting quietly till the winner departs, that he may, with a craped face and a cocked pistol, follow an seize the whole. "Old Manners," says Ireland, "was the only person of his time who amassed a considerable fortune by the profession of a gamester." Hogarth has shown him as miser and gamester, discounting a nobleman's note-of-hand.

The second scene is Rakewell's morning levee; with the French fencing-master, Dubois, who died in a quarrel with an Irishman of his own name and profession; next is Figg, the prize-fighter, who beat half-a-dozen Hibernians-hence the label-" A Figg for the Irish;" the teacher of music resembles Handel; the French-horn player, Bridgman; the pictures are Fighting Cocks, and the Judgment of Paris. In the third plate, the fellow with a pewter-dish, Leathercoat, was many years porter at the Rose Tavern: the decapitated Cæsars are very comical. In the sixth plate, the fire alludes to an accident which happened April 23, 1733, when White's Chocolatehouse, and two adjoining houses in St. James's-street, were consumed; Sir Andrew Fountaine's fine collection of paintings was destroyed; His Majesty and the Prince of Wales were present above an hour, and encouraged the firemen and others to work at the engines, by distributing money amongst them. The eighth scene is very full: the tailor is Lord L -r, who had a passion for that business;* the maniac chained to the floor is a copy of one of Cibber's figures over the gate of Bedlam; the Rake himself is the companion figure; the man sitting by the figure inscribed "Charming Betty Careless," is William Ellis, the maniac who lost his reason through

* Just as an "exquisite" Earl of our time had; and whose taste not only gave the name to a fashion, but actually cut out his own clothes.

love for his Betty: an etching of this plate has been sold for 117. Os. 6d. Mr. Knowles, of 34, Bridge-street, Blackfriars, possesses a beautiful and most valuable drawing in Indian ink of the above Bedlam scene; it was evidently drawn by Hogarth for the purpose of transferring to the copper, but the drawing is most exquisitely finished. (Nichols, 1833.)

The woman, discarded in the first print, receives Rakewell in the fourth, is present at his marriage, follows him into the gaol and watches over him in Bedlam.

The original sketch in oil, of the 6th plate, was, in 1782, at Mrs. Hogarth's, in Leicester Fields; the principal character is here sitting, and not thrown upon his knees in execration, which is a very effective incident of the picture.

The eight paintings were sold in Hogarth's sale, in 1745, for twenty-two guineas each, the purchaser being Alderman Beckford, at whose sale they were purchased by Col. Fullerton for 650 guineas. In 1802, they were bought by Sir John Soane for 5987.; and they are now in the Picture-room of the Soanean Museum, in Lincoln's Inn Fields.

Hogarth painted the Rake's Progress in a temporary summer residence at Isleworth. The crowd of visitors to his studio was immense. He often asked them if they knew for whom one or other of the figures in the pictures was designed, and when they guessed wrong, he set them right. It was generally believed that the heads were chiefly portraits of low characters on town.

HOGARTH PAINTS THE STAIRCASE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S HOSPITAL.

Before Hogarth had done anything of much consequence in his walk "between the sublime and grotesque," he writes: "I entertained some hopes of succeeding in what the puffers in books call the great style of History Painting; so that without having had a stroke of this grand business before, I quitted small portraits and familiar conversations, and with a smile at my own temerity, commenced history painter, and on the great staircase of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, painted two Scripture stories, the Pool of Bethesda, and the Good Samaritan, with figures seven feet high." These paintings Hogarth presented to the Charity, in acknowledgment of which he was elected a Life Governor of the Hospital. The inscription records: "The historical Paintings of this staircase were painted and given by Mr. William Hogarth, and