We know not if it should be considered an escape or not; but certainly there was, in the earlier period of English art, one man of extraordinary genius, who, vigorously striking out a great moral idea, might have been the founder of a new school. We mean Hogarth. He was, however, too adventurously new for the age, and left no successor; nor is even now the greatness of his genius generally understood. He has been classed with "painters of drolls;" yet was he the most tragic painter this country--we were about to say, any country--has produced. We are not prepared to say it is a school we should wish to have been established; but we assert that the genius of Hogarth incurred for us the danger. His works stand unique in art--that which can be said, perhaps, of the works of no other painter that ever existed, and obtained a name. We had written so far, when we were willing to see what a modern writer says of this great man; and we are happy to find his views in so great a degree coincide with our own. We make the follow-extract from Cleghorn's 2d volume of _Ancient and Modern Art_; a work, indeed, that, when we took up the pen, it was our purpose to speak of more largely, and to which we mean to devote what further space may be allowed for this paper:-- "To Hogarth, on the other hand, M. Passavant awards that justice which has been denied to him by his countrymen. Hogarth is of all English painters, and, perhaps, of all others, the one who knew how to represent the events of common life with the most humour, and, at the same time, with rare and profound truth. This truth of character is, however, visible not only in his conception of a subject, but is varied throughout in the form and colour of his figures in a no less masterly manner." "Hogarth [continues Mr Cleghorn] stands alone as an artist, having had no predecessors, rivals, nor successors. He is the more interesting, too, as being the first native English artist of celebrity. Yet a tasteless public was unable to appreciate his merits; and he was driven to the necessity of raffling his pictures for small sums, which only partially succeeded. In spite of the sneers of Horace Walpole that he was "more a writer of comedy with his pencil than a painter," and the epigrammatic saying of Augustus Von Schlegel, that 'he painted ugliness, wrote on beauty, and was a thorough bad painter,' he was a great and original artist, both painter and engraver, whose works, coming home to every man's understanding and feelings, and applicable to every age and country, can never lose their relish and interest. They are chiefly known to the public by his etchings and engravings, which, however, convey a very imperfect idea of the beauty and expression of the original paintings." We only object to stress laid upon his humour, which is not his, or at least his only, characteristic. He was a great dramatist of human life; humour was the incidental gift, tragedy the more essential. Who had