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"Oh, I can't have this!" said Mr. Pringle, in dreadful embarrassment. "I shall get down. I don't want to listen to any more of this. Here, coachman, stop, let me out."

"By all means," said Tom, gaily; "better let me bring you back, if you are tired. But I would recommend you to think over what I have said, and carefully too, or you may find things turn out very inconveniently."

"I suppose I am to take this, that you are threatening me?" said Pringle, nervously. "I can't put up with that, you know. I can protect myself, and, if not, there is the police."

"Oh, I am glad you have mentioned that," said Tom, "for now I can explain myself. I shall have to insult you, Pringle -I shall, indeed-and publicly too; and insulting is a very mild word for what I must do. You drive me to it."

"We'll see," said Pringle, in a fury. "Just try it."

your

Charles Dicke

grew more distasteful to him every hour;
there was something, too, rather despotic
and mistrustful in her manner and tone,
which did not bode well. The rest of the
family, too, now that the matter was con-
cluded, took the same tone, and were
scarcely as deferential as when the ar-
rangement was in petto. Again, he also
felt often that he had behaved with cruelty.
And this growing distaste to the new alli-
ance came in aid of the old predilection.

Tom, who, for all his wildness, had a
"downrightness" and purpose that helped
him to know human nature and character,
was certain that he should succeed in what
he desired-in fact had determined that it
should be. Accordingly he left his remarks
to germinate, and then set about his own
business. He looked up some more of his
French sporting friends; indeed, English
sporting men are always received abroad
with a feeling that reaches almost to rever-
ence. He laid down the law on this and
that horse, in his own tongue, allowing
his listeners to find such broken English,
or to understand him as they could; and
received many deferential invitations to
dine. In short, he spent a very satis-
factory day in the French capital.

LETTERS AND LETTER-WRITERS.

ARTISTS.

Tas taken Dess cond solemnity; an object procession o herents was Upon this th padlock on t put another; academy in sp and all uncha Sir James T Hogarth's fa ademy in a of his house Furnished tic quested admi

to incur this fell to decay. the rebellions Presbyterian m lane, into an ac years, till, the ription-money seized for rent, dropped. "Sir James became possess apparatus; and on proper and sefal, I prop artists should s in St. Martin'speople could n gure. I lent tributing the cademies to the superiority w Fould not broo member should to the establish right to vote in the society. As directors, profess ridiculous imitat

"I shall," said the other. "You know people don't swear the peace and all that sort of thing as they do in England. There'd be the-well-the thrashing first, coram publico; and then my friend, Viscount Galons, of the Jockey Club, will have to wait on you, and settle time and place. You see, what with intended connection with an English earl, and all that, you couldn't shirk it. Now, understand me, I don't mean to be offensive to you, but only to state a programme, the correct card,' and all that. After all," said Tom, whom the thought of Phoebe caused to change his tone again, "you know, you are a pledged man; pledged to as nice and charming a little thing as ever stepped. Surely you can't compare that long girl to her; you have more taste In 1760, on the accession of George the than that! And mind this, above all; if Third to the English throne, the establishyou'll do the honourable thing, I'll management of a Royal Academy began to be a that it will be done comfortably, and that you'll be saved.”

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These were Tom's words as he parted with his friend.

Mr. Pringle returned to his hotel in a state of considerable agitation. Tom, while stating the serious consequences, had really struck on the difficulty of the case-viz., how he was to withdraw from the new engagement. The fact was, this inconstant youth had no sooner pledged himself to his new engagement than his wild fancy began to stray back to his old flame. The "long girl," so loud of voice and vigorous of manner,

HOGARTH, that sturdy and honest satirist of the Georgian era, was no great letterwriter; his thoughts not flowing with rapidity, and his spelling being deficient. Yet, nevertheless, several strong and well-expressed letters of his do exist, and they show the pugnacious and downright character of the man even better than could be expected.

topic of the day. Upon this occasion
Hogarth wrote to the Earl of Bute a letter
opposing the plan, and suggesting another
of his own.

The painter begins: "Much has been
said about the immense benefit likely to
result from the establishment of an
academy in this country; but, as I do not
see it in the same light as many of my
contemporaries, I shall take the freedom
of making my objections." Hogarth then
goes on to sketch the origin of academies
in England, the first being one in Queen-
street, started by some "gentlemen painters
of the first rank," about 1700. The plan

of the French Ad
ment of which La
rge portion of
easy terms. But
the arts were ber
acquired any oth
rose to a few le

salaries-not mor
pounds a year-w
the case, were eng
most influence wit
relative merits!
Hogarth then a
of the failure of
Paris, and comp

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was taken from France, and the business conducted "with far less fuss and solemnity;" nevertheless, it soon became an object of ridicule, and a caricature procession of the president and his adherents was chalked round the walls. Upon this the angry amateurs clapped a padlock on the door, and the subscribers put another; and so ended the first English academy in spite, wrangling, envy, hatred, and all uncharitableness.

artists at the Turk's Head in Gerrard-
street, Soho, to propose a ridiculous
address to king, lords, and commons in
favour of a new academy, that they should
have founded themselves.
"Thus," says
Hogarth, "to pester the three great estates
of the empire about twenty or thirty students
drawing a man or a horse, appears, as it
must be acknowledged, foolish enough;
but the real motive is that a few bustling
characters who have access to people of
rank, think that they can thus get a
superiority over their brethren, be ap=
pointed to places, and have salaries, as in
France, for telling a lad when an arm or a
leg is too long or too short." The next
sentence is William Hogarth's altogether.

Sir James Thornhill, one of the seceders (Hogarth's father-in-law), then set up an academy in a room he built at the back of his house (now the playhouse), and furnished tickets gratis to all who requested admission; but very few caring to incur this obligation, the scheme soon"Not approving of their plan, I opposed fell to decay. Mr. Vanderbank headed it; and, having refused to assign to the the rebellious party, and converted an old society the property which I before had Presbyterian meeting-house, in St. Martin's- lent them, I am accused of acrimony, lane, into an academy. This lasted a few ill-nature, and spleen, and held forth as years, till, the treasurer sinking the sub- an enemy to the arts and artists. How scription-money, the lamp, stove, &c., were far their mighty project will succeed seized for rent, and academy number two I neither know nor care; certain I am it dropped. deserves to be laughed at, and laughed at it has been."

Sir James dying," says Hogarth, "I became possessed of his old academy apparatus; and thinking such a place, on proper and moderate principles, was useful, I proposed that a number of artists should subscribe and hire a room in St. Martin's-lane, where thirty or forty people could meet and draw the naked figure. I lent them the old furniture, and attributing the failure of the two former academies to the leading members assuming a superiority which their fellow-students would not brook, I proposed that every member should contribute an equal sum to the establishment, and have an equal right to vote in every question relative to the society. As to electing presidents, directors, professors, &c., I considered it a ridiculous imitation of the foolish parade of the French Academy, by the establishment of which Louis the Fourteenth got a large portion of fame and flattery on very easy terms. But I could never learn that the arts were benefited, or that members acquired any other advantage than what arose to a few leaders from their paltry salaries—not more, I am told, than fifty pounds a year-which, as must always be the case, were engrossed by those who had most influence without any regard to their relative merits!

Hogarth then adduces Voltaire's opinion of the failure of the Royal Academy of Paris, and complains of a meeting of

Hogarth then goes on to strongly recommend the young king to furnish his own gallery with one picture from each of the most eminent painters in England. This, he says, would set an example to a few of the opulent nobility, though he feared that even then there never would be a market sufficient in this country for the number of lads who turned artists.

"France," says Hogarth, bitterly, "had in art assumed a foppish kind of splendour, and drew vast sums of money from England." To vie with the Italian and French theatres of art was impossible; but he adds, severely, "We are a commercial people, and can purchase their curiosities ready made-as, in fact, we do-and thereby prevent their thriving in our native clime."

Then comes a sharp stroke. "In Holland selfishness is the ruling passion; in England vanity is united with it. Portrait-painting, therefore, has, and ever will, succeed better in this country than in any other, and upon the whole it must be acknowledged that the artists of the age are fitted for each other. If, hereafter, the times alter, the arts, like water, will find their level."

Hogarth ends his honest growl by enumerating the reasons that kept back art in England. First, our religion, forbidding images for worship or pictures to rouse veneration; second, that trade is

pre

ferred to painting and sculpture. At the close of the letter Hogarth opposed the sending young men abroad to study the antique. Such study might improve an exalted genius, but it could not create it. Everything necessary for sculpture or painting could, he said, be found in London. Then he finishes with a shot at Kent, who had travelled with but very indifferent results. "Neither England nor Italy," he says, ever produced a more contemptible dauber than the late Mr. Kent; and yet he gained the prize in Rome; in England had the first people as his patrons; and, to crown the whole, was painter to the king."

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Hogarth, though a member of the Society of Arts that first met at Rathwell's Coffeehouse, Henrietta - street, Covent-garden, used to fear it might originate too many artists, some of whom would regret in after life that they had not learned to make a shoe, rather than have devoted themselves to the polite arts.

Constable's letters are very fresh and natural, and show a quiet, enthusiastic, domestic man, who was never so happy as when thoughtfully painting by the side of a Suffolk water-mill. This artist was the son of a well-to-do miller who lived at East Bergholt, in Suffolk, a pretty place overlooking the river Stour, which separates the county from Essex. The gentle declivities, says Leslie-its luxuriant meadows, sprinkled with flocks and herds; its wellcultivated uplands; its woods and rivers, scattered villages and churches; its farms and picturesque cottages-made Constable a painter, and he never forsook the local deity for any other worship. He was as a child fond of painting, and when a lad a plumber and glazier near his father's house taught him to paint landscapes. He was intended for the Church, but was brought up as a miller, till his craving for art drove him to the studio. This artist's first landscape appeared at the Royal Academy in 1802. He began to make sketching tours in the north, but he had no relish for solitary mountains, and sighed for villages, churches, mills, farms, and cottages where he had first seen happiness. There is a delightful freshness, honesty, and enthusiasm about Constable's letters, and they show the exquisite pleasure that he drew from nature, and how reverently he viewed it. In one of his letters he speaks of a Nicholas Poussin landscape, now in the National Gallery: "Large um

brageous trees, and a man washing his feet at a fountain near them-a solemn, deep, still, summer's noon. Through the breaks in the trees are mountains, and the clouds are collecting about them with the most enchanting effects possible.' cannot be too much to say," writes Constable, "that this landscape is full of religious and moral feeling.'

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In 1821 the critic had been denouncing his skies as obtrusive, and quoted Reynolds, who, talking of Titian's landscapes, says: "Even their skies seem to sympathise with their subjects. I have been often advised to consider my sky as a white sheet thrown behind the objects." Against this conventional dogma Constable flew with clenched teeth. He writes with great good sense and earnestness to his friend Fisher: "It will be difficult to name a class of landscapes in which the sky is not the keynote, the standard of scale, and the chief organ of sentiment. . . . . The sky is the source of light in nature, and governs everything, even our common observations on the weather of every day are altogether suggested by it." Skies are so difficult in composition and execution, Constable contended, because, with all this brilliancy and inner light, they must not be brought forward; but this, he contended strongly, did not apply to phenomena or accidental effects of sky, such as those stormy seaviews he was fond of painting, because they always attract the eye especially.

In a letter of the same year he says: "How much I wish I had been with you on your fishing excursion in the New Forest" (what river can it be?). "But the sound of water escaping from mill-dams and willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts and brickwork - I love such things. Shakespeare could make everything poetical; he tells us of poor Tom's haunts among 'sheep-cotes and mills.' As long as I do paint I shall never cease to paint such places" (the picture he was painting on the day he died was a mill). They have always been' my delight; and still I should paint my own places best. Painting is with me but another word for feeling, and I associate my 'careless boyhood' with all that lies on the banks of the Stour. Those scenes made me a painter, and I am grateful that I had often thought of pictures of them before I ever touched a pencil.... Does not the Cathedral (Salisbury) look beautiful among the golden foliage? Its solitary grey must sparkle in it."

Constable, who spent half his happy life under the mill-side willows, took an innocent delight in observing facts in nature, that, though simple and obvious, escape ordinary people. In a picture of Salisbury Cathedral, seen from the bishop's grounds, he makes a point of the "master cow," or leader of the herd, drinking first; and, as usual, he makes his cows of his own Suffolk breed-without horns. He was delighted when Sam Strowger, the well-known porter and model of the academy, and also a Suffolk man, praised his picture of The Cornfield, because "the lord," or leading reaper was well in advance of his fellows. Constable was very indignant at any imitations of the old masters, and especially of their brown foliage. When Matthews wrote his pleasant Diary of an Invalid, and asserted that Gaspar Poussin's green landscapes" were detestable, and that "the delightful green of nature could not be represented in a picture," Constable expressed great indignation.

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Wherever Constable went with an easel under his arm and his colours in his pocket, he made first to the village mill, so powerful is the magic of early memories. In a letter of 1825 he again mentions his favourite haunt, and speaks of riding out of the white atmosphere of Bath to the green village of Bath-Easton, and, finding himself as if by instinct at the mill, "surrounded by weirs, back-waters, nets, and willows, with a smell of weeds, flowing water, and flour in my nostrils."

Constable was a very generous praiser of other men's works. He saw at Lady Dysart's a fine Cuyp, which he thus graphically sketches, and like a true artist: "Still and tranquil the town of Dort is seen, with its tower and windmills under the insidious gleam of a faint watery sun, while a horrid rent in the sky almost frightens one, and the lightning descends to the earth over some poor cottages.'

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Constable's notices of his friends and contemporaries are always just, generous, and free from malice or envy. He says in one place, Turner's light, whether it emanates from sun or moon, is exquisite." "Turner never gave me so much pleasure, or so much pain, before. Collins's skies and shores are true, and his horizons always pretty. Calcott has a fine picture of a picturesque boat driven before the wind on a stormy sea; it is simple, grand, and affecting." He says of a Watteau, "It seems painted in honey-so mellow, so tender, so soft, and so delicious;" and again, of

Turner, "Turner has some golden visions, glorious and beautiful. They are only visions, but still they are art, and one could live and die with such pictures."

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The letters of Haydon are very characteristic of the man-passionate, impulsive, and egotistic. The two volumes recently published by his son, F. W. Haydon, and which sum up the life of an unhappy genius, supply us with many of these. The old story is told again in these volumes with the fullest detail, and no corner of this extraordinary man's career is now left dark. Haydon, born in 1786, was the son of a Plymouth printer. From a child he took to drawing, and never rested till, in 1804, he obtained his father's reluctant leave to go to London and study at the Royal Academy. For six months he worked alone, day and night drawing the cast and studying Albinus's Anatomy. He entered the Academy almost at the same time with Wilkie, who was described to Haydon as a raw, tall, pale, queer Scotchman," and they soon became friends. Wilkie's success with his Village Politicians, for which Lord Mansfield gave him thirty guineas, encouraged Haydon to paint a large picture, Joseph and Mary resting on the road to Egypt, which Fuseli, who had taken a fancy to the impetuous lad, hung on the line, Mr. Thomas Hope, of Deepdene, purchasing it for one hundred guineas. In 1808 he commenced his great picture of Dentatus for Lord Mulgrave; but in the midst of this work a visit to the Elgin Marbles left him in despair with his picture, and, to use his own words, "he dashed out the abominable mass." The Dentatus was exhibited in 1809. The picture was cruelly hung in the dark Octagon-room, and its chances of celebrity lost for the time.

Haydon now entered his name with Wilkie for election at the Academy as associate. Wilkie got in, but Haydon was rejected for a third-class man. Thus began the bitterness of this contentious man's life. A commission for a scene from Macbeth for Sir George Beaumont Haydon lost by insisting on painting it life-size. In 1810 he gained a prize of one hundred guineas for his Dentatus in a competition at the British Gallery, and the same year had a small cabinet picture of Romeo and Juliet thrust into the same dark room that had spoiled its predecessor. Haydon, in an irrepressible rage, at once took down the picture and carried it home

with him in a hackney-coach. And from this time till sixteen years after he sent in no picture to the Academy exhibitions. How far West and Northcote showed jealousy, and how far all this arose from the incontrollable temper and conceit of the man, it is now difficult to say.

Haydon's celebrated Three Letters in the Examiner in 1812 declared him at once an open enemy of the Academy. He was at once deserted and slandered. But there was no taming such a Minotaur as this. Owing six hundred pounds, and without a shilling in his pocket, he began his greatest picture, The Judgment of Solomon. At the Water Colour Society in Spring-gardens this picture proved a great success, and sold for seven hundred guineas. The Royal Academy came round, and wished to elect him. It was while painting this picture that poor Haydon's eyes began to go, a misfortune that we think latterly materially affected his art. He was partially blind, and wore, says his last biographer, two or three pairs of large round concave spectacles. There is a doubt if he ever saw an object in its natural size and shape.

Haydon's next picture, The Entry into Jerusalem, painted in his state of half blindness, drew thirty thousand persons to see it in one season; but it led to no commissions. With all his fame he was surrounded by duns, and half starving.

Overwhelmed with debt, and frequently arrested, Haydon, in 1822, completed his picture of Lazarus, one of the finest of his works. It was exhibited; all London crowded to see it; and the receipts soon mounted to two hundred pounds a week. An angry and neglected creditor, indignant at the sum Haydon was making, suddenly put in an execution; the Lazarus was seized. Haydon was sent to prison, his newly-married wife was turned out, and all the property sold.

Yet still he went on full of hope, defying his enemies. The Mock Election, a scene he had witnessed in the Bench, was purchased by George the Fourth for five hundred guineas. For Sir Robert Peel he painted Napoleon Musing at St. Helena, for which he received only one hundred and thirty guineas. More lecturing, more reviling of real and imaginary enemies, and the end came. His Aristides and Nero, when exhibited, did not draw, and then he closed his exhibition, which had been eclipsed by the fame of Tom Thumb next door, with a loss of one hundred and eleven

pounds. One June morning he shot himself before his easel. In his journal was found the following entry:

God forgive me. Amen!

Stretch me no longer on this tough world.-LEAR.

It is in Haydon's letters, after all, that you best see the man. The fiery energy with which he threw himself into the study of the Elgin Marbles, for instance, is perfectly shown in the following passage from a letter to the President of the Imperial Academy, St. Petersburg.

"In the Neptune's breast," he says, "you will observe a most astonishing instance of the union of a simple fact of nature with the highest abstracted form. Under the left armpit you will see a wrinkle of skin, which must be so in consequence of the arm being down; and thus, the space to contain the same quantity of skin not being so great as when the arm is up, the skin, of course, must wrinkle. In the other arm, which is elevated, the space from the side to the arm being greater, the skin, of course, must be stretched, and there is no wrinkle. In the fragment of the Negro's chest which I sent you, under the left armpit you will see the wrinkle of skin. It is for this reason I cast the Negro, because in the movement of his body he developed the principles of the Elgin Marbles. Now, sir, how simple is this! Yet what other artist but Phidias would have ventured to put the wrinkle of human skin in the form of a God! On the sides of the ribs of the same fragment you will also find the veins marked, which Winkelmann and other theorists have ever considered as incompatible with the form of a divinity."

The following letter to Mrs. Siddons, on her admiration of the Elgin Marbles, is amusing for its high-flown style and profound gallantry:

"MADAM,-I hope I may be pardoned for venturing to express again my grati tude for your unhesitating decision on Saturday.

"I have ever estimated you, madam, as the great high priestess at the shrine of Nature; as the only being living who had ever been, or who was worthy to be, admitted within the veil of her temple; as one whose immortality was long since decided. You will then judge of my feelings at having been so fortunate as to touch the sensibility of so gifted a being. The whole evening I could not avoid

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