become the master of a town and country-house; the latter a bequest to his wife from her father, Sir James Thornhill, serjeantpainter to the king, who, though originally objecting to his daughter's clandestine marriage with Hogarth, ultimately learned to value his great talent and unflinching integrity. Hogarth, for a long period before his death, lived in a good house in Leicester Square, then one of the best localities in London, and inhabited by Frederick, Prince of Wales, son of George II. There exists a very curious print of the square at that period, showing the prince borne in his sedan towards St. James's, attended by halberdiers and his suite. In one corner of the view Hogarth's house is distinguishable by the sign of "the Golden Head" over the door. We give thus much of the print. The "head" was cut by Hogarth himself in cork; and all who are familiar with his later engravings will remember the imprint, "Published at the Golden Head in Leicester Fields." Mrs. Hogarth sold his works here after his decease. The house was greatly altered since Hogarth's days, and incorporated with the Sablonière Hotel, which occupied the corner of Green Street adjoining.

The house at Chiswick was that in which Sir James Thornhill

resided at the time of his daughter's elopement with Hogarth. It is gloomy with high walls; long walls of brick bound the way to it from the main street of the village. In the days of Anne it was far from the metropolis, but now it is as much a London suburb as Islington was then. Large as the house appears, it is really somewhat small, for it is all frontage, and only one room deep, without any back windows. The garden is not larger than such a house would require, and the small stable at its further extremity has over it a room Hogarth used as a studio. The palette of the

painter is still religiously preserved by the Royal Academicians of London. It is peculiar in its form, and we engrave it as a curious relic of the artist. Hogarth's Palette. Against the garden wall are two narrow upright slabs of stone, commemorating the graves of his dog and bird. The words upon the former-"Life to the last enjoyed, here Pompey lies "-are a satirical paraphase on the epitaph to Churchill, the satirist, in Dover church, with whom he had passed some years of friendship, but who had bitterly attacked Hogarth at the close of his career; not, however, without provocation on the part of the latter.

Hogarth was in St. Bartholomew's parish in 1697, and he died on the 26th of October, 1764. In Chiswick churchyard the painter reposes, and he is not the only artist buried there. Loutherbourg rests under a most heavy and ambitious monument; a slab against the wall near it records the name of James Fittler, the engraver; and William Sharpe, another of our best English engravers, was

buried, by his desire, near Hogarth. The tomb of the latter artist is a not ungraceful structure, exhibiting on one side Garrick's well-known rhyming epitaph: a simple record on the east side notes the death of Hogarth, in October, 1764, at the age of sixtyseven, and his wife in November, 1789, at the age of eighty. His sister's death is recorded on the south side, in August, 1771, at the age of seventy; and that of Mary Lewis, his niece, who acted as saleswoman at his house in Leicester Square, and who died in 1808, at the age of eighty-eight. The other face of the monument has an inscription to his mother-in-law, the widow of Sir James Thornhill, who was first buried in this grave, in 1757. This monument had fallen into much decay; but it was admirably restored, at the cost of William Hogarth, of Aberdeen, in 1856. All honour to his northern namesake's liberality and taste!

B

THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH, R.A.

RITISH ART is well typified in the person of Gainsborough. His earliest studies were in his native Suffolk fields; his latest in the metropolis, where his talent assumed its highest position. About all his works there is a striking earnestness, and the discrimination of true genius, which casts no dishonest reflex from courtly to cottage life. Gainsborough's peasants are true peasants, they are not the refined and unnatural beings who seem but aristocrats in disguise, such as occasionally emanate from the ateliers of fashionable artists, and which never existed but in their fertile brains. Gainsborough's

cottage children can be appreciated for their truth, by cottagers as well as connoisseurs in art; they bear the impress of nature-the same nature that laughs in such abundance of beauty in his rich landscapes.

Gainsborough's boyish years were spent at Sudbury, in Suffolk, where he was born, in 1727. His early bias was His early bias was so strongly towards art that he was allowed to follow it. His sketches were of the most vigorous and truthful kind. At the early age of fourteen he left his native place for London, that he might there obtain the instruction he required to finish what nature had begun. He studied under two artists, who are well known from the drawings they contributed to the adornment of the editions of popular authors, published in the earlier half of the last century. One was Francis Hayman, a friend and companion of Hogarth; the other was Henry Gravelot. They were industrious men, but "the ingenious Mr. Hayman," as the booksellers often termed him, and Gravelot, the designer of mythic groups for encyclopædias, were not the men to do much for the genius of Gainsborough, except to teach him the mere manipulation of art-a valuable thing in its way to a country lad, but not of sufficient importance to affect his style. He returned to his father's house after four years' residence in London, and went back to Nature as his schoolmistress. Before he reached his majority he married; the match was not so imprudent as it at first sight appears: the young lady had an annuity of two hundred pounds, and the rent of the house they first inhabited at Ipswich was but six pounds a year. At Ipswich he remained for many years, but was induced