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into long, narrow, formal flower-beds. Five large trees whose ages bespoke their acquaintance with Hogarth, showed his love of the beautiful as well as the useful; a mulberry, walnut, apricot, double-blossomed cherry and a hawthorn; the last of these was a great favourite with my father from its beauty and the attraction it was to the nightingales which never failed to visit it in the spring; the gardeners were their mortal enemies, and, alas ! have at length prevailed. A few years ago, when I went to visit the old place, only one of the trees remained, (the mulberry seen in our sketch); in a nook at one side of the garden was a nut-walk, with a high wall and a row of filbert trees that arched triumphantly over it; at one end of this

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walk was a stone slab, on which Hogarth used to play at nine-pins; at the other end were the two little tombstones to the memory of a bird and a dog.' The house is as you see it here, the rooms with low ceilings and all sorts of odd shapes,-up and down, in and out,-yet withal pleasant and

comfortable, and rendered more so by the gentle courtesy of their mistress and her kindly servant; the very dogs seemed to partake of the human nature of their protector, and attended us wherever we went, with more than ordinary civility. Hogarth might have been tempted to immortalise one of them for its extreme ugliness and the waggish spirit with which it pulled at its companion's ears, who in vain attempted to tug at the bits of stumps that stuck out at each side of its tormentor's head. Mr. Fairholt was permitted to sketch the drawing-room; the open door leads to the chamber from whence, it is said, Miss Thornhill eloped with Hogarth.

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Mr. Cary, in the note to which we have already alluded, says, There can hardly be a doubt that the house belonged to Sir James Thornhill, and that Hogarth inherited it from him. Mrs. Hogarth lived there after her husband's death, and left it by will to a lady from whose executor my father bought it in the year 1814. The room from which Miss Thornhill

is said to have eloped is the inner room, on the first floor; this room was used by my father as his study. Over the dining-room fire-place was a spirited pencil sketch of five heads, and under them written "five jolly fellows," by Hogarth,—during an absence the servants of a tenant carefully washed all out.'

We can easily imagine how the union between Hogarth and his daughter, commenced after such a fashion, outraged not only the courtliness, but the higher and better feelings of Sir James Thornhill. Hogarth's innate consciousness of power may at that time have appeared to him vulgar effrontery; and it is not to be wondered at, that, until convinced of his talent, he refused him all assistance. There is something so false and wrong in the concealment that precedes an elopement, and the elopement of an only child from an aged father, that we marvel how any one can treat lightly the outraged feelings of a confiding parent. Earnest tender love, so deeply rooted in a father's heart, may pardon, but cannot reach forgetfulness as quickly as it is the custom of play-writers and novelists to tell us it may do.

Sir James Thornhill was greatly the fashion: he was the successor of Verrio, and the rival of La Guerre, in the decorations of our palaces and public buildings. His demands for the painting of Greenwich Hall were contested; and though La Fosse received two thousand pounds for his works at Montague House, besides other allowances, Sir James, despite his dignity as Member of Parliament for his native town of Weymouth, could obtain but forty shillings a square yard for painting the cupola of St. Paul's! Thus the patronage afforded native talent 'kept him poor; and though it must have been necessary (one of the cruel necessities induced by love of display in England), to have an establishment suited to his public position in London, nothing could be more unpretending than his ménage a Chiswick. Mrs. Hogarth, advised by her mother, skilfully managed to let her father see one of her husband's best productions under advantageous circumstances. Sir James acknowledged its merit at once, exclaiming Very well! Very well! The man who can make works like this can maintain a wife without a portion;' and soon after became, not only reconciled, but generous to the young people. Hogarth had tasted the bitterness of labour: he had even worked for booksellers, and painted

portraits!-so that this summer brightness must have been full of enjoyment. He appreciated it thoroughly, and was ever the earnest admirer and the ready defender of Sir James Thornhill; thus the old knight secured a friend in his son; and it was pleasanter to think of the hours of reconciliation and happiness they might have passed within the walls of that enclosed garden, beneath the crumbling trellice, or the shadow of the old mulberry-tree, than of the fortuneless artist wooing the confiding daughter from her home and her filial duties.

We were invited to inspect Hogarth's painting-room-a mere loft, of most limited dimensions, over the stable, which the imagination could easily furnish with the necessary easel, or still less cumbrous graver's implements. It is situated at the farthest part of the garden from the house; a small door in the garden-wall leads into a little enclosure, one side of which is occupied by the stable. The painting-room is over the stable, and is reached by a stair; it has but one window, which looks towards the road.

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It must have been sufficiently commodious for Hogarth's purposes; but possesses not the conveniences of modern painting-rooms. The house

at Chiswick could only have been a place for recreation and repose when relaxation was cared for, and where sketches were prepared to ripen into publication.

There are traditions about Chiswick, of Hogarth having while studying and taking notes, frequented a little inn by the roadside, and almost within sight of his dwelling. It has been modernised throughout-and supplies no subject for the pencil-yet it retains some indications, not without interest, of a remote date. The Painter must have been familiar with every class of character; and Chiswick was then enough of a country village to supply him amply with material. But, although a keen satirist, it is certain that he had as much tenderness for the lower orders of creation as a young loving girl. In a corner of this quaint old garden, two tiny monuments are affixed to the wall, one chiselled perhaps by Hogarth's own hand, to the memory of his canary bird!* The thinking character of the painter's mind is evidenced in this as in everything he did—the engraving on the tomb suggesting reflection. Charles Lamb said of him truly, that the quantity of thought which he crowded into every picture, would alone 'unvulgarise' every subject he might choose; and the refined Coleridge exclaims, Hogarth! in whom the satirist never extinguished that love of beauty which belonged to him as a poet.' There is something inexpressibly tender and touching in this memento of his affection for a little singing bird the feeling must have been entirely his own, for he had no child to suggest the tribute to a feathered favourite. The tomb was afterwards

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accompanied with one to Mrs. Hogarth's dog. pieces of white stone, laid against the brick-wall, but they are records of gentle and generous sympathies not to be overlooked. That Hogarth was more than on friendly terms with the canine race, the introduction of his

*It is by no means improbable. The looseness of spelling in the first word meets with similarities in his engravings. The skull and cross bones beneath are merely cut in single lines and are those of a bird; it is a small strip of stone which time has fractured, and is held to the wall by iron clamps. Pompey enjoys a more imposing tablet; he may have been the favourite of Mrs. Hogarth, and the stone have been erected by the relative to whom she bequeathed the property, and who resided here with her. Hogarth's favourite dog, who figures in his master's works, and appears seated beside his portrait in the National Gallery, was named Crab, and his countenance attests his worthiness to enjoy that cognomen. Pompey must have been the lady's pet, and flourished in the dignity of a more aristocratic title.

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