to take the portrait of a horse from his window, sketch the outline in pencil on the canvass, make a minute or two to this effect-"light bay, one hind leg white half up, the other pastern white, small star on the forehead." With this the ceremony ended: he knew where the lights and shades fell on the generality of horses, so set it down as certain they must thus fall on the one he intended to paint. It was then in most cases considered exceedingly like, and as he carefully marked the nail holes in the shoes, this added to the white star being there, the very groom declared it was as "natural as life."

Now, as to one horse being more muscular than another, or being more or less so than usual in any one part of his frame, never entered people's heads in those good days; and that, in consequence of such different formation, light and shade would vary, was an idea not even contemplated. Horse painters merely then went upon the principle that where there was a convexity there must be a lighter colour to show that rotundity; and when a concavity existed a darker colour must be used to show it. This would be all well enough in painting a ploughed field or a drab driving-coat, or indeed any subject without gloss on its surface, and placed out of doors in a sombre grey light; but a horse in a stable, or under the influence of sunshine, is quite another thing. Then come their uncertain and adventitious lights produced by the gloss of the horse's skin in the strong light in which we place him. These together set any thing like rule at defiance; and, on any movement of the animal so placed, change like the hues of the chamelion. It might be supposed that black and white, with the intermediate shades to be made by

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the two colours, would represent a black horse. By such means the representation of a black horse certainly could be made, but it would be a very imperfect one of the richness of a black horse in blooming condition; nor would black and white suffice for a grey. I remember once pleasing a very indifferent artist exceedingly who had painted a nearly white horse for a gentleman. The horse was perfect as nature had made him, and the artist had taken great care to represent most ostensibly tokens of his being So. He was polite enough to ask my opinion of his performance, on which I most conscientiously assured him it was a most faithful representation both in colour and animation of a stone horse.

To the late Mr. Benjamin Marshall is due the merit of striking out a something new in his profession. This was first introducing those artificial lights thrown on his horses, that produced a gloss and a look of air that no painter had done before him. He fairly brought his horses, or at least the generality of them, out of the canvass. They were not mere representations of the animal, but little horses standing before us. Nothing shows the force of painting more than the impression it makes on unsophisticated minds. I remember being taken to Marshall's when a boy about twelve years of age. Of the merits of a picture I then knew little; but I quite recollect my perfect astonishment at the pictures I saw, and that, until I passed my hand over the surface of them, I could not be convinced the horses were not absolutely standing in relief from the canvass. We have now the art of representing medals on paper, so as to make us often hesitate in deciding whether they are or are not really standing from the paper. This effect

Marshall produced by his style of painting, and in this one particular some of his pictures exceed those of any of the vastly superior artists I have seen since.

Looking at Marshall as a painter, he possessed such glaring faults as would ever prevent his becoming great as an artist. He had never been taught his art, knew nothing of drawing, or the proper comparative diminution of objects as regards distance. Of perspective he knew about as much as a Chinese : in fact, he never made a picture without some fault in it that no schoolboy who had learned drawing for six months, would have looked over; and when he had made such an incongruity, all the painters together who had ever exhibited at the Royal Academy could neither have made him allow it, alter it, or I really believe see it.

I can mention an anecdote of Marshall known but to a few, but which shows the truth of what I state of him.

If any one will take the trouble to examine the old print of Lord Darlington and his fox-hounds, they will see one of the hounds in the fore-ground has actually but three legs. Doubtless this was an oversight in painting the picture, and excusable, in fact would not have detracted from his general merit as a painter, being merely an oversight; but though Marshall was told of this before the picture went to the engraver's, nothing could induce him to put in the fourth leg, nor did he. "There's legs enough among the lot already," said he: "if any body finds one wanting, they may suppose, if they like, the dog is scratching his ribs with it." In this state was it engraved, and in this state sold.

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In a picture Marshall painted for a Mr. Baker I first saw the representation of a horse bounding as a deer does in his trot with all four legs off the ground. The portrait of the mare in the fore ground was the particular one I touched to convince myself it was not by some artificial means in relievo: the attitude of the bounding horse was perfect: it was hard to believe he stood still; but in this extraordinary fine picture, this horse, from the size he was painted and the distance he was represented to be from the mare, was about as big as two moderate elephants. Such was Marshall. That his pictures were coarsely done is quite true; but he painted for effect, and any one looking at them close could but wonder how such dabs of paint could produce the harmony they did at a distance. I, by way of joke, made him a present of a minute silver trowel. Ben took it all in good part, and declared "it was the best tool he ever had!"

I am not sure whether I should be correct if I said he was the first who represented horses with all legs off the ground in their trot and gallop: at all events, he had the merit of always painting them so, and I believe that few if any other artists did. Strange that so many much more talented men should have persevered for ages in representing horses in an attitude in which it is a moral certainty they never could have seen them. To represent a horse trotting at the rate of eighteen miles an hour, as Sartorius did old Phenomenon, with two legs on the ground, was absurd. No man living could ever detect a horse so situated going at that pace. No man's eye is quick enough to detect a race-horse at speed with any leg on the ground. Whenever they are so, it is for the briefest particle of a second. So horses have ever, till within

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comparatively a few years, been represented in a situation in which they were never seen. This at once accounts for the want of apparent motion in animals drawn by old artists.

What led them into this great error probably was this:-in order to see how a horse trotted, they had him put into that pace at the rate of five or six miles an hour in order to give the artist time to make his observations. Having ascertained how the horse went at six miles, they (with the exception of a little elongating the stride of the two lifted legs) represented them going sixteen just in the same way: consequently they looked as if they had hurt their two toes, and were holding their legs up out of the way.

Whether at this day horses at speed are really truly drawn no one can or ever will be able to decide, because their motions are so rapid that we never can catch a sight of all their legs in any particular situation. It is fair, however, to suppose the artists of the present day are pretty correct, because the pace, as they now represent it, appears natural, and gives us the idea of pace: right or wrong, therefore, it answers every purpose we want.

And here I must mention one as an artist who never ranked high as a painter, but as a sketcher ought not to pass unnoticed, for to his lively pencil the arts, so far as sporting subjects are concerned, are really very greatly indebted. I allude to Mr. Henry Alken. Nearly all of our recognised animal painters of modern date were and are most decidedly superior to him as painters, but none in the spirit he infused into his sketches of hunting and hunters. His pencillings were all life, his horses and hounds were all going. Why was this? Alken knew how the thing should