things. I have successors.

But the rulers seldom

do anything now, as you did in the despotic days. When an evil grows enormous it may be swept away. But they never move to prevent the evil. If anything is done, the people do it themselves. There is plenty of good feeling at workno want of knowledge.

Prior. What are the preachers about?

me

Hogarth. Your reverence must excuse saying that even in the days of a powerful Church there was more thought of forms than of religion. I painted the 'Sleeping Congregation;' and I painted Fanaticism.' Indifference and Credulity were antagonists in my day. Indifference had the worst of the fight, and things seemed mending. But Credulity put on another garb; and we may have-but I forget how near we are to Smithfield. Somerset. You seem a good Protestant, Mr. Hogarth.

Hogarth.-I am an Englishman. I am more tolerant of foreigners and friars than when I painted Calais Gate;' but when I see old superstitions as rampant as when you took a hand in putting them down, I am apt to say, "Oh, for an hour of"-I was going to compliment you-but I would rather say, Oh, for an hour of that Protector who, when intolerance put on her face of persecution, said—“The sound of my cannon shall be heard in Rome."

Somerset.-A vigorous Protector was that brewer of Huntingdon. We have had some talk lately.

Falkland and Hampden, he says, are in the New Parliament House; but he, the greatest, has no place. This is a queer generation, Mr. Hogarthrather timid and servile, I opine. Hogarth.-Kings—

Aris.-Come, Sir, no sedition.

Hogarth.-Sedition! Is not the name of 'King' to be mentioned without coupling it with sedition? But you are right. You speak from the remembrance of your own dungeons. Things are changed in England, Mr. Aris.

Somerset.-Truce. I thought my Edward would have changed fear into love. But three centuries were to roll over before that secret of government was understood. Victoria

Dreamer.Three cheers!

There was a rattle as of multitudinous applause. Cave's tankard had fallen on the floor;-and I fairly awoke.

THE TAIL-PIECE.

THE last design of Hogarth was a tail-piece to his works. He made an allegory of 'The End.' Time is prostrate on the earth. His scythe is snapped in two; his hour-glass smashed; his will, bequeathing all things to Chaos, is in his palsied hand; the last whiff from his broken pipe curls up into 'Finis.' Around him lie the shoemaker's last; the cobbler's end; a torn purse; a battered crown ; a fractured musket; a cracked bell; a worn-out besom; the capital of a column; a broken palette. The landscape is composed of a ruined tower; a tumble-down hovel; a withered tree; and the sign of 'The World's End.' In the distance are a gallows and a foundering ship. Phoebus is falling from his chariot; the moon is darkened.

In this emblematic print, while we admire the ingenuity of the artist, we see the limited range of his art. Material objects are poor exponents of abstract ideas. But they may tell something.

It was a fashion of the minor poets of the seventeenth century to write verses which they called 'Advice to a Painter,' or, ' Directions to a Painter.' If I were to give suggestions to a designer for a tail-piece to 'Once upon a Time,' I should say— sketch a pendant to Hogarth's Finis.' Raise

Time into the noblest attitude of Wisdom-one foot on the earth, the other lifted, as if springing to the skies. Let his scythe be in one hand-in the other, the seed which he is beginning to scatter "broad-cast o'er the land." Let Time be the

sower as well as the reaper. Let him out-stretch his glorious wings, as he prepares to leave behind him, in the dimmest distance, the emblems of past ignorance and misrule-the ruined hovel, the rampant gibbet, and the farm-yard in flame. Let him look before him, at the vast school, and the narrow prison; at venerable temples of pure worship, and stately towers of good government. Be there, the Crystal Palace, the National Museum, the Free Library, the Public Park. Let the statues of the Poet and the Philosopher stand in the porticos of the Halls of Commerce. Let the plough and the steam-engine be the companion symbols of Industry. Let the cannon be thrown down at the foot of the printing-machine. Let the sun break through the dispersing clouds; and let the rainbow span the farthest hill-tops.

THE END.

LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET,

AND CHARING CROSS.