AQUILIUS.—Great as Landseer is, I like this but little. The picture was surprisingly painted, but when you have admired the handiwork, there is an end. The satire is not good: something sketchy may have suited the wit, but the labour bestowed makes it serious: we want the shortness of fable to pass off the “_animali parlanti_.” CURATE.—Gratian, who ought to order a composition picture of “The Happy Family” all living in concord, knows all the race, in and out of kennel, and should tell us if these dogs are not a little out of due proportion one with the other. GRATIAN.—I think they are; but do not imagine I could bear to look upon the “Happy Family,” though the piece were painted by Landseer. I never saw them in a cage but I longed to disenchant them of the terror of their keeper. They all looked as if they could eat each other up if they dared. No, no—no convent and nunnery of heterogeneous natures, that long to quarrel, and would tear each other to pieces but for fear of their superior. I love natural instincts, and am sure the “Happy family” must have been sadly tortured to forget them. CURATE.—I certainly admire these animal portraits, they seem to be very like the creatures; but I really have no gallery-menagerie where I can put them. They appear to me to have been painted to adorn the stable residences of noblemen, gentlemen of the turf and kennel. You smile, Aquilius, but I mean it not to their dispraise, for in such places they might amuse in many an idle hour, and give new zest to the favourite pursuits. AQUILIUS.—I only smiled at the thought, that though many such noblemen and gentlemen “go to the dogs,” they would not quite like to see them among the “family portraits,” and was therefore pleased at your appropriating these productions to the stable and the kennel. I am not surprised that you do not know what to do with them. I believe Morland was the first who introduced pigs into a drawing-room; for my own part, I ever thought them better in a sty. GRATIAN.—Hold there, I won’t allow any one to rub my pigs’ backs but myself, and you know I have a brace of Morlands, pigs too, in my dressing-room. LYDIA.—And if the pictures in any degree make you treat your animals more kindly, Morland deserves praise; and, in that case, all such works should be encouraged by the “Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.” AQUILIUS.—If Gratian is kind of his own nature, his familiarity with all creatures is of another kinship than such as art can bestow. He would have given a litter of straw to Morland himself, had he met him in one of his unfortunate predicaments, and thus have made him happy. But I fear we are not quite safe in thus commending our choice artists, on the score of the humanity they are likely to encourage. CURATE.—Why not? Has not Landseer dedicated to “the Humane Society” the portrait of the noble Retriever; and is that not his “chief mourner,” promoting affection between man and beast?