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be, and his spirited pencil well described the thing as it ought to be. Old Seymour might, and I believe could, have made a better picture as a picture: but he could no more have represented a hunter going as Alken could, than I could describe a run like Beckford (and that is saying a good deal). If I am rightly informed, Alken could "ride a bit;" if so, this accounts for all.

About the time when Ben Marshall as a painter and Henry Alken as a sketcher were at their best, Mr. Ward was, though a much older man, in the zenith of his career. To attempt to compare Marshall as a painter with Ward would be to compare Peter Pindar with Shakspeare, or Captain Morris with Lord Byron. Still, so far as making a characteristic portrait of a Leicestershire hunter goes, Marshall would have "beat the crack in a common canter." Ward was no sportsman: he could not confine his energetic pencil to represent a mere quiet looking, but finely formed, animal. Ward wanted fire, vigour, the distended nostril, the flowing mane, and the fiery eye of the war-horse. Old Vivian, with his ragged points and more ragged tail, would to this enthusiastic painter have been a subject beneath his pencil. He could no more appreciate the form of a hunter than I could the beauty of a felucca. Give Ward the horses of the sun to represent, he was at home. The lion roused from his den would call all the truly masterly efforts of his pencil and all the wondrous and glowing tints of his palate into requisition; and in a most masterly manner would such subjects be pourtrayed; but that he would estimate a perhaps plain and sneaking looking horse (though worth three hundred

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guineas) as worthy his canvass was a consummation, though devoutly wished, never to be hoped for. Thou King, thou Mammoth of animal painters, great Ward! I would not have given thee one guinea to paint a trotting hack, though half a diadem was the worth of some of thy all but sublime productions. One dun charger I once saw painted by Ward was enough to immortalise him: take the him for which you please, horse or painter, the picture was fine enough to immortalise both.

This era brought forth another (I believe) selftaught artist Cooper- a most clever artist, always, so far as my judgment goes, true to nature, and in many, I may say most, of his pictures beautifully correct a most decidedly better painter than Marshall, equally characteristic, and quite as aware of the points to be admired in the hunter. As pictures his were very superior to the other's, and possessed the great desideratum of all pictures, namely, his objects standing well from the canvass. I never detected in any of Cooper's pictures any thing contrary to nature. In most of them I have admired a whole as perfectly natural, and they possessed that most difficult excellence to achieve, boldness with perfect softness.

Notwithstanding all the superiority of many, nay a host of painters, none I ever yet saw came up to Marshall in producing the representation of hair on the horse. His horses in the most blooming condition still looked hairy, and like a diminutive horse standing in front of the canvass. It was a knack (to use a common phrase) he had of producing this effect. To show it was a particular knack, though no proof of general fine painting, I will illustrate it.

I was from a child fond of a little daubing myself,

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and have attempted many things as subjects, from a windmill to a winner of the Derby. We had a room, and a quaint old room it was, all wainscot, cunningly devised for sliding panels, to let in enterprising Cavaliers to rescue, carry off, or outrage solitary damsels. In this room we breakfasted, and in this said room in a nook hung a key that our old housekeeper venerated as the open sesame of her stores of Christmas fruits, sugars, and other appurtenances of her vocation. This was, in fact, the key of her wholesale warehouse, from which her retail establishment was replenished. In an unlucky moment I possessed myself of this key, and by its means filled a minor storehouse of my own with sundry good things, from potted char to orange chips. This key was seldom called for, most luckily for me, for I lost it: so, to escape detection for the moment, I painted one on the oak panel, and shaded it to the life: so there, to all appearance, it still hung. The Devil never deserts his own. I found the real key, scratched its locum tenens from its place, and, like many a criminal, gloried I fear more in my stratagem than regretted the delinquency that brought it forth.

Mr. E. Landseer is too high in the profession to need comment. I have not the advantage of being acquainted with this Gentleman, and it has been my loss that I have seen but few of his productions. Such as I have scen have delighted me: as we say in sporting phrase, Landseer "for choice" against the field.

That animal painting has in no shape arrived at any thing bordering on perfection must be quite evident from the little attention that was paid to it until within a very short time. It is, in fact, in its

infancy. Landscape is almost as old as the hills it represents, and portrait painting, no doubt, older than any of the very venerable Ladies and Gentlemen we see pourtrayed by it. Men were as valuable centuries ago as they are now; the cynic may think they were more so: Ladies may have been as lovely in the same days, though the beauteous faces we now see may excuse our being sceptical on this point: and if the days of chivalry were not passed, we should be held as recreant Knights if we did not break a lance in support of this opinion, if any of the plumed and grim Cavaliers of former days were resuscitated to offer us a challenge. Whether the first painter was inspired by the deeds of the hero or the charms of the fair, I know not; he must have had very bad taste if it was not by the latter. If such was not the case, I can offer but one excuse for him, and will in charity suppose that

"His prentice hand he tried on man,

"And then" began "the lasses oh!"

Horses not being considered as valuable as men, and as living productions and beautiful objects being so wonderfully inferior to women, they were for ages held to be infra dig. of the painter's study; but the Beacon Course and fox-hunting have rendered an animal ranging in price from two hundred to five thousand guineas an object quite worthy to be handed down to posterity; and in doing this, if we were to calculate the value of each animal he has painted, Mr. Herring has perpetuated the images of more money than all other living artists put together. He is a most correct and accomplished draftsman, and thoroughly knows every point of a horse; and, further, he has the facility of catching the character of different

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horses to perfection: his colouring and the gloss of condition he gives are both admirable: still, with him and every artist I am acquainted with, Marshall's peculiar point of excellence is wanting, namely, the perfect look of hair that he gave. Here was also Ward's excellence. The latter artist's, as also Chalon's pictures of dogs and other animals, are perhaps faultless: but, so far as horses were concerned, Chalon never was happy in his productions: in fact, unless an artist is a good judge of a horse as an animal, he cannot paint one from nature: his eye cannot detect beauties or faults in the living animal: this being the case, he cannot detect them on his canvass. Such an artist could copy a picture probably so as to deceive us as to which was or was not the original, because he would copy the portrait of a horse as he would the drawing of a church or a tree; but character is wanted as well as a faithful likeness in painting living objects. This no man can catch who is not a judge of such objects, and here, of course, many artists fail, particularly as portrait painters.

Among the many splendid prints that have been brought out of late years, it is rather singular that no really fine print of a chase has been produced, or at least I have not seen one. We have some most magnificent ones of the "meets" and characters of different Hunts, many that, I should say, would cost a couple of thousands engraving: most interesting they must be to the characters themselves, their relatives and friends; but an equally fine print of the Quorn and other firstrate Hunts in chase as an accompaniment to the "meets" would be such soul-stirring additions to the walls of a Sportsman's room, that, even supposing such an anomaly as a fox-hunter flagging in the pur