fine church.

Alassio is a lovely little town, said to owe its name to Alassia, the daughter of the Emperor Otho the Great, who fled to these forests with her betrothed lover, Aleramo. We were struck with the remarkable appearance of a huge rock out at sea, which strongly reminded us of the Bass Rock of our own coast. We found that it was called Gallinaro, from the abundance of what we call domestic fowls with which it was once crowded.

Arriving at Albenga, our attention was directed to the fine ancient Gothic cathedral; indeed the whole appearance of the place is very striking. Besides numerous small towers, there are three very lofty ones, which, from their bold machicolations, and battlements, present a remarkable appearance, and have all the aspect of a castle of romance. The early baptistery, all green with mould and damp, is also a very interesting object. How gladly would we have spent weeks where a few hours had to suffice, so continually did we come across scenery so romantic and beautiful; and cathedrals, castles, and other buildings of interest. We were amused with the primitive nature of the instruments with which they were breaking up the ground, and took a sketch of one of them. Leaving Albenga there is a very pretty view of an aqueduct, and the fine church of Monte Carmelo, built near three centuries ago. Near Pietra Ligure we noticed a castle on a rock to our right, and took a sketch of a remarkably steep bridge of three arches over a stream to our left. Finale Marina, which we next reached, is one of the most picturesque little villages on the coast: the precipices overhanging the shore are of great height, and the views of the lofty distant mountain-ranges very fine. Passing through a tunnel in the rocks we arrived at Noli, an old episcopal city, with walls and towers, two of which we roughly sketched. The rocks which overhang the road are of various coloured marbles, red, yellow, black, and white, and frequently variegated; while from the clefts spring out gigantic aloes, which flourish with astonishing luxuriance. The old castle up the mountain-side appears to have been of considerable strength, and would thoroughly command the city.

After passing numerous little places, such as Bergeggi, Vado, &c. &c., we arrived at Savona, the most important town we had seen since leaving Nice. It has a considerable number of churches, besides a handsome cathedral, containing many fine paintings,

the tomb of the parents of Sixtus IV. and other interesting objects. The view of the harbour, with its fine old tower, is a choice subject for an artist's pencil. We very much regretted not being able to visit the Santuario, which is about an hour's drive from here, but were compelled to forego the pleasure, and hastened on to Cogoleto, the reputed birthplace of Christopher Columbus, in 1447. (How many birth-places had he? Genoa also claims the honour.) We sketched a singular old building to the right of the road. A little farther on, and we arrived at a large shipbuilding yard, with a considerable number of vessels in various stages of construction; then, onwards through the suburbs until we reached the Lanterne (Lighthouse), passing which we came on one of the finest city views in the world, we were in GENOA.

“The hand of him here torpid lies,

That drew the essential form of grace;

Here closed in death th' attentive eyes

That saw the manners in the face.”—DR. JOHNSON.

`HE follower of no school, the imitator of no particular master,

THE

with no (what has been called) “palette pedigree,” William Hogarth was essentially original, and of an originality showing itself no less in conception than design. Nature, human nature, in its varying moods, now grave now gay-character, life, and its passions, -these were the themes in which his genius found inspiration; and ever as nature presented itself did he portray it, not satisfied with truth alone, but the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. There is never any glossing of facts, no departure from the exact circumstances of the scene for the sake of effect, no idealising of the hard, stern real. In the features of his characters there is never an expression we cannot recognise in life. They are no conglomeration of those grotesque absurdities in mien and appearance which can never be met with, and which form the staple of ordinary caricaturists. They are not, as Lamb remarks, "the sports of nature, but her necessary, eternal classes." As an instance of this we need

but allude to the wonderful print, Four Caricatures and Three Characters, in which it is easy to imagine we may find every possible type of human face, from the lowest to the highest. He had no particular regard for the circumstances of wealth or refinement; choosing to depict chiefly scenes of commonplace, ordinary life, or vice, poverty, squalor, and wretchedness, which could illustrate a moral or afford opportunity for that humour of which he possessed so marvellously keen and quick an appreciation. He has been taxed with selecting subjects in low life because unable to cope with scenes in higher society. To his power of elevated painting we shall afterwards refer, but we may here surmise that he chose the former as affording a greater scope for his particular field of representation. The classes from which he took his examples are under the influence of a greater variety of those passions which he wished to portray, and in them is the character more deeply stamped than in the higher ranks whose aim it is ever to school the features and manner into a non-betrayal of the feelings which sway within, whose care it is that none shall read “the mind's construction in the face."

In the ranks of the English satirists of man and manners Hogarth must take a foremost place. Lowest branch of criticism though satire may be, it is nevertheless a powerful one. The sensitiveness of human nature to being laughed at is an established fact, and fear of ridicule will effect more than argument, advice, or even example. It is, perhaps, not too much to assert that Punch's incisive wit and non-respecter-of-persons' satire has contributed more to the death of little follies than the combined precepts of divines, reformers, physicians, and essayists innumerable. And there are few of Hogarth's paintings or prints without a direct object in the correction of vice or the satirising of folly. There are, however, several, as The Strolling Players, The Enraged Musician, the four companion plates of Morning, Noon, Evening, and Night, The Sleeping Congregation, The Distrest Poet, Country Inn Yard, &c., which must be classed simply as works of fancy; and amongst these that first-mentioned, Strolling Players dressing in a Barn, is without doubt the best. The variety and character of detail, its spirited execution, and the natural and unforced manner in which is shown the humorous contrast of what Roquet, in speaking of this print, called the "misère et de pompe théatrale,"

render it in a way perfect. Walpole would give it the place of honour as the first of all his works, but it cannot be placed before those others with a higher aim and of necessarily greater originality, which deal not with the amusing phases of life, but with the more serious, the passion-marked tragedy of human nature. A good instance of Hogarth's peculiar humour is to be found in this composition in the representation of Cupid, who, although supplied with "property" wings, is compelled to seek the aid of a short ladder to reach down a pair of boots from the rafters !

The most highly finished of his prints is Plate 1 of the Election series, The Election Entertainment, but for general excellence and fineness of execution the six pictures of Marriage à la Mode (in the National Gallery) must hold the first place. Ireland, in his useful and interesting commentary on our artist, says: "If considered in the aggregate, in conception, character, drawing, pencilling, and colouring, it will not be easy, perhaps not possible, to find six pictures painted by any artist in any age or country in which such variety of superlative merit is united." They were painted in answer to the censure which accused him of always selecting low and vulgar subjects. The most highly characteristic figure in the series is that of the old peer in Plate 1. He is the perfect personification of titled pride, and in his rich dress and surroundings, the vellum ancestral tree to which he points, his fine features (this is one of Hogarth's best faces), in the aristocratic gout with which his swathed foot shows he is afflicted, high birth and haughty dignity are traceable, whilst, with the natural ease of his attitude and the refinement of his manner, such a contrast is formed with the plebeian appearance of the city alderman, to whom, in exchange for some of his wealth, he is giving the heir to his title and squandered estate to be son-in-law.

For the great lessons of morality which they inculcate, the Rake's and Harlot's Progress, and Industry and Idleness, must rank among the foremost of his works. The furtherance of virtue and morality, the depicting of vice in its true, mean, contemptible rags, in distinction to the Macheathian adorning of it in gay and glowing garb, was ever the determined aim of Hogarth-a worthy aim, which even his bitterest enemies were compelled to admit. For Hogarth had to encounter great and severe opposition. An essentially original painter, the inaugurator of a new style, with no care for, and there

fore no appreciation of, the ideal of the schools, he indulged in a fierce, prejudiced contempt for the great Continental masters, though his ridicule (as evidenced in the "Battle of the Pictures") of the fashion which procured fabulous prices for spurious "originals" of great masters, whilst sneering at honest modern efforts, was well deserved at that period. Even Reynolds, the "gentleman of painting," is numbered amongst his detractors, accusing his talent of being raw, and with no taste for the beautiful. It may be admitted that Hogarth had no academical canon of beauty; but if there be no beauty outside of this, none in the women we meet and talk to, then he did not need it, for it was apart from his work. Nature, and nature to the life, was the extent of his power; by nature it was limited, and nature is illimitable! The figure and face possessing most beauty and grace is the charming and pretty Amazon with the drum in the centre of the print of Southwark Fair. Coleridge speaks of those beautiful faces which Hogarth, "in whom the satirist never extinguished [that love of beauty which belonged to him as a poet, so often introduces as the central figure in a crowd of humorous deformities, which figure (such is the power of true genius) neither acts, nor is meant to act, as a contrast, but diffuses through all and over each of the group a spirit of conciliation and human kindness; and even when the attention is no longer consciously directed to the cause of the feeling, still blends its tenderness with our laughter, and thus prevents the instructive merriment, at the whims of nature or the foibles or humours of our fellow-men, from degenerating into the heart-poison of contempt or hatred." Lamb also insists on this "something to touch the heart, and keep alive the sense of moral beauty," in Hogarth, and adds the instance of the frequent introduction of children into his pieces, which have "singular effect in giving tranquillity and a portion of their own innocence to the subject." Who, in considering the plate of the Rake's Progress, depicting his marriage to the bedizened old hag whose wealth he desires, does not turn from the hardness of these unholy associations, and feel better for the sweet face of the girl who kneels behind with its expression of unmurmuring fidelity? There was no deficiency of poetry in Hogarth, nor of that undercurrent of pathos which is ever so closely allied with humour.

Other opponents, such as Barry and Gilpin, speak of Hogarth as