are not like the background on which they are painted even the pictures on the wall have a peculiar look of their own. Again, with the rapidity, variety, and scope of history, Hogarth's heads have all the reality and correctness of portraits. He gives the extremes of character and expression, but he gives them with perfect truth and accuracy. This is, in fact, what distinguishes his compositions from all others of the same kind, that they are equally remote from caricature, and from mere still life. It of course happens in subjects from common life, that the painter can procure real models, and he can get them to sit as long as he pleases. Hence, in general, those attitudes and expressions have been chosen which could be assumed the longest, and in imitating which the artist, by taking pains and time, might produce almost as complete fac-similes as he could of a flower or a flower-pot, of a damask curtain or a china vase. The copy was as perfect and as uninteresting in the one case as in the other. On the contrary, subjects of drollery and ridicule, affording frequent examples of strange deformity and peculiarity of features, these have been eagerly seized by another class of artists, who, without subjecting themselves to the laborious drudgery of the Dutch School and their imitators, have produced our popular caricatures, by rudely copying or exaggerating the casual irregularities of the human countenance. Hogarth has equally avoided the faults of both these styles--the insipid tameness of the one, and the gross vulgarity of the other-so as to give to the productions of his pencil equal solidity and effect. For his faces go to the very verge of caricature, and yet never (we believe in any single instance) go beyond it: they take the very widest latitude, and yet we always see the links which bind them to nature: they bear all the marks and carry all the conviction of reality with them, as if we had seen the actual faces for the first time, from the precision, consistency, and good sense with which the whole and every part is made out. They exhibit the most uncommon features with the most uncommon expressions, but which are yet as familiar and intelligible as possible, because with all the boldness they have all the truth of nature. Hogarth has left behind him as many of these memorable faces, in their memorable moments, as perhaps most of us remember in the course of our lives, and has thus doubled the quantity of our observation. We have attempted to point out the fund of observation, physical and moral, contained in one set of Hogarth's pictures, the "Marriage à la mode." The rest would furnish as many topics to descant upon, were the patience of the reader as inexhaustible as the painter's invention. But as this is not the case, we shall content ourselves with barely referring to some of those figures in the other pictures which appear the most striking, and which we see not only while we are looking at them, but which we have before us at all other times. For instance, who having seen can easily forget that exquisite frost-piece of religion and morality, and antiquated prude in the morning scene? or that striking commentary on the good old times, the little wretched appendage of a footboy, who crawls half famished and half frozen behind her? The French man and woman in the "Noon" are the perfection of flighty affectation and studied grimace; the amiable fraternisation of the two old women saluting each other is not enough to be admired; and in the little master, in the same national group, we see the early promise and personification of that eternal principle of wondrous self-complacency, proof against all circumstances, and which makes the French the only people who are vain even of being cuckolded and being conquered. Or shall we prefer to this the outrageous distress and unmitigated terrors of the boy, who has dropped his dish of meat, and who seems red all over with shame and vexation, and bursting with the noise he makes? Or what can be better than the good housewifery of the girl underneath, who is devouring the lucky fragments?—or than the plump, ripe, florid, luscious look of the servant-wench, embraced by a greasy rascal of an Othello, with her pie-dish tottering like her virtue, and with the most precious parts of its contents running over? Just-no, not quite as good is the joke of the woman overhead, who, having quarrelled with her husband, is throwing their Sunday's dinner out of the window, to complete this chapter of accidents of baked dishes. The husband in the evening scene is certainly as meek as any recorded in history; but we cannot say that we admire this picture, or the night scene after it. But then, in the "Taste in High Life,” there is that inimitable pair, differing only in sex, congratulating and delighting one another by "all the mutually reflected charities" of folly and affectation-with the young lady coloured like a rose, dandling her little, black, pug-faced, white-teethed, chuckling favourite, and with the portrait of Monsieur Des Noyers in the background, dancing in a grand ballet, surrounded by butterflies. And again, in "The Election Dinner," is the immortal cobbler, surrounded by his peers, who, "frequent and full”— "In loud recess and brawling conclave sit ❞— the Jew in the second picture, a very Jew in grain—innumerable fine sketches of heads in the "Polling for Votes," of which the nobleman overlooking the caricaturist is the best; and then the irresistible, tumultuous display of broad humour in the "Chairing the Member," which is, perhaps, of all Hogarth's pictures, the most full of laughable incidents and situations—-the yellow, rustyfaced thresher, with his swinging flail, breaking the head of one of the chairmen, and his redoubted antagonist, the sailor, with his oak-stick, and stumping wooden leg, a supplemental cudgel -the persevering ecstasy of the hobbling blind fiddler, who, in the fray, appears to have been trod upon by the artificial excrescence of the honest tar-Monsieur the monkey, with piteous aspect, speculating the impending disaster of the triumphant candidate, and his brother, Bruin, appropriating the paunch-the precipitous flight of the pigs, souse over head into the water, the fine lady fainting, with vermilion lips, and the two chimney-sweepers, satirical young rogues! We had almost forgot "The Politician," who is burning a hole through his hat with a candle in reading the newspaper; and the chickens, in the "March to Finchley," wandering in search of their lost dam, which is found in the pocket of the sergeant. Of the pictures in the "Rake's Progress " we shall not here say anything, because we think them, on the whole, inferior to the prints, and because they have already been criticised by a writer, to whom we could add nothing, in a paper which ought to be read by every lover of Hogarth and of English genius.* * See an "Essay on the Genius of Hogarth," by C. Lamb, published in a periodical work called the Reflector. ON GOING A JOURNEY. ONE of the pleasantest things in the world is going a journey; but I like to go by myself. I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, nature is company enough for me. I am then never less alone than when alone. "The fields his study, nature was his book." I cannot see the wit of walking and talking at the same time. When I am in the country, I wish to vegetate like the country. I am not for criticising hedge-rows and black cattle. I go out of town in order to forget the town and all that is in it. There are those who for this purpose go to watering-places, and carry the metropolis with them. I like more elbow-room, and fewer incumbrances. I like solitude, when I give myself up to it, for the sake of solitude; nor do I ask for -a friend in my retreat, Whom I may whisper, solitude is sweet." The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do, just as one pleases. We go a journey chiefly to be free of all impediments and of all inconveniences; to leave ourselves behind much more to get rid of others. It is because I want a little breathing-space to muse on indifferent matters, where Contemplation "May plume her feathers and let grow her wings, That in the various bustle of resort Were all too ruffled, and sometimes impair'd," |