tail, not unlike a painter's brush." Thus accomplished and accoutred, with little money in his pocket, and a large conceit of himself, he made an excursion to Margate, with the two-fold purpose of enjoying life and painting portraits. His skill of hand was great-his facility, it is said, wondrous; while his oddity of dress, his extreme youth, and the story of his early studies, attracted curiosity and attention-and sitters came-the wealthy and the beautiful. But the painter loved low company -all that was polished or genteel was the object of his implacable dislike. He had not patience to finish any portrait that he commenced, nor the prudence to conceal his scorn of his betters. The man who could leave wealthy sitters to join in the amusement of a pig, an ass, or a smock race, was not likely to have such patrons long; and Morland returned to London with a dozen of unfinished portraits, on which he had received little or no money.

A well-known nobleman had heard of Morland's talents, and now commissioned him to paint a few pictures, for which he provided the subjects. This is a sort of drudgery which genius, if it consults its dignity, will seldom submit to; but when the subjects are "not particularly distinguished for their purity"-these are the words of Hassell—the commissions ought to be rejected with indignant loathing.

To those commissions the biographer now cited hesitates not to impute that " particular distaste which he ever after evinced for the society of virtuous women;" and discovers in them " a reason why so striking a resemblance to the frail sisterhood is found in the female subjects which occur

in some of his productions." Let his lordship answer for real and not imaginary sins. Morland had moved too long in gross company to leave the honour of polluting his mind to any one of the peerage. He had become ere this the boon-companion of hostlers, pot-boys, horse-jockies, moneylenders, pawnbrokers, punks and pugilists. With these comrades he roamed the streets and made excursions by land and water; the ribald jest, the practical joke, and scenes coarse and sensual, formed long ere now the staple of his life.

Amidst all this wildness and dissipation, his name was still rising. He valued his pencil as the means of acquiring not distinction, but the gold wherewith to charm away creditors and liquidate tavern bills. The pictures which he dashed off according to the craving of the hour, are numerous and excellent. They are all fac-similes of low nature-graphic copies of common life-their truth is their beauty, and if they have anything poetical about them, it lies in the singular ease and ruminating repose which is the reigning character of many. Pigs and asses were his chief favourites; and if he had stolen them, or dealt in them, as one of his rustic admirers declared, he could not have painted them better. The sheep on the hill, the cattle in the shade, and the peasant superintending the economy of the barn-yard, the piggery, or the cow-house, shared also largely in his regard. He was likewise skilful in landscape-not in that combination of what is lovely or grand, over which a poetical mind sheds a splendour that anticipates paradise; but in close, dogged fidelity, which claims the merit of looking like some known spot

where pigs prowl, cattle graze, or asses browse. At this period he lodged in a neat house at Kensall Green, on the road to Harrow, and was frequently in the company of Ward, the painter, whose example of moral steadiness was exhibited to him in vain.

While he resided at Kensall Green, he fell in love with Miss Ward-a young lady of beauty and modesty and soon afterwards married her; she was the sister of his friend the painter; and to make the family union stronger, Ward sued for the hand of Maria Morland, and in about a month after his sister's marriage obtained it. In the joy of this double union, the brother artists took joint possession of a good house in High Street, Marylebone. Morland suspended for a time his habit of insobriety, discarded the social comrades of his laxer hours, and imagined himself reformed. But discord broke out between the sisters concerning the proper division of rule and authority in the house; and Morland, whose partner's claim perhaps was the weaker, took refuge in lodgings in Great Portland Street. His passion for late hours and low company, restrained through courtship and the honey-moon, now broke out with the violence of a stream which had been dammed in rather than dried up. It was in vain that his wife entreated and remonstrated his old propensities prevailed; and the post-boy, the pawnbroker, and the pugilist, were summoned again to his side, no more to be separated.

Before the rupture of this brotherhood, Ward made some engravings from the pictures of Morland, which obtained the notice of Raphael Smith,

an engraver of talent and enterprise, who knew the town, and felt the value, and foresaw the popularity of those productions. Under his directions Morland painted many pictures from familiar scenes of life; Smith engraved them with considerable skill, the prints had a sale rapid beyond example, and nothing stood between the painter and fortune but his own indiscretion. "Those works," says Hassell, "showed that he had a wonderful facility in seizing those propitious coincidences-those light, ornamental, and minute proprieties and graces which contribute such an ample store to the genuine stock of original composition of consummate art. The harmonious combination of his back grounds, his drapery, ever natural and decorous, without confusion or perplexity; his children, also, his sheep, his horses, his pigs, and all the appendages of the rural landscape, including every other department of picturesque scenery, are still classed among the finest of modern productions, are still objects of imitation to young students, and are still considered and exhibited by the best judges and patrons of the fine arts, as most remarkably neat, correct, and elegant views of

nature."

In those days, before folly had entirely fixed him for her own, Morland loved to visit the Isle of Wight, and some of his best pictures are copied from scenes upon the coast. A rocky shore-an agitated surf-fishermen repairing their nets and careening their boats, or disposing of their fish, generally formed part of his pictures. He was ever ready too to join them in their labour, and more so in the mirth and carousal which followed.

A friend once found him at Freshwater-gate, in a low public-house called The Cabin. Sailors, rustics, and fishermen, were seated round him in a kind of ring, the rooftree rung with laughter and song; and Morland, with manifest reluctance, left their company for the conversation of his friend. George," said his monitor, "you must have reasons for keeping such company. "Reasons, and good ones," said the artist, laughing, "see-where could I find such a picture of life as that, unless among the originals of The Cabin ?" He held up his sketch-book and showed a correct delineation of the very scene in which he had so lately been the presiding spirit. One of his best pictures contains this fac-simile of the tap-room, with its guests and furniture.

The early management of his father had made the whole swarm of picture dealers, cleaners, and copiers acquainted with Morland's value, and, what was far more unfortunate, had let them into the secret of his personal tastes. They knew his love of low company, his delight in the bottle, and his desire to enjoy the passing moment, whatever expense it might incur; and some of them were ever at his elbow to lay down the gold for present pleasures, upon the understanding that the pencil should clear off the debt. His absurd aversion to decent company naturally aided the views of those sordid miscreants; they applauded his vulgar prejudice as true independence, and pushed about the jest, apparently at the expense of " the fine people," but really and truly at the cost of the unhappy Morland, who sat in idea sole monarch of the realm of free and unshackled art.

These