We find it, in 1740, on a plate which one J. Skinner engraved from a design by 'T. Ross.' This is really a very beautiful book-plate, as its reproduction (p. 83) shows. A shield--the shape and ornamentation of which is Chippendale--bearing the Wiltshire arms, is placed upon a platform and against a cippus, or small monumental column; Shakespeare stands on the right, and listens, with a pleased expression, to the music of a rustic piper, whose head appears at the back of the cippus, whilst, on the left, Pope weighs the eloquence of an orator, whose head and upraised hand also appear from behind the cippus. A medallion of Augustus is on a pedestal above. Lying on the platform are a globe and books and many emblems of the painter's and musician's arts, and amongst these sits Cupid thinking, perhaps, with which he will play next, and holding the end of a ribbon inscribed: 'John Wiltshire, Bath, 1740.' The design is certainly original, and makes us interested as to the identity of the owner. It is quite possible that we have here not only an interesting book-plate, but the book-plate of an interesting man. When Gainsborough, the painter, moved to Bath in 1760 he found that the 'Pickford' of the day, who had the carrying trade of the Bath road, was no ordinary carrier, but a man of taste and culture, and ready to do anything he could to help art and artists. He was a certain John Wiltshire, and before Gainsborough had been long a resident at Bath he was Wiltshire's fast friend, and in the enjoyment of a very tangible proof of friendship: for Wiltshire carried to London, _gratis_, every picture that Gainsborough needed to send thither. Not a penny would he take for carriage. 'No, no,' he would say, when the painter's modesty led him to protest against such generosity, 'I admire painting too much for that.' No doubt he did, and it must be said that, in return for his goodness, Gainsborough gave him many a charming bit of work on which to feast his eyes. Let us hope we have before us the book-plate of this 'kind of worthy man,' as Allan Cunningham called him, who loved Gainsborough and admired his works. [Illustration] Of course the plate is twenty years earlier than the commencement of Gainsborough's residence at Bath and of his friendship with Wiltshire; but what of that? Wiltshire had been, likely enough, a lover of things beautiful and the owner of books, long before; there is no necessity for imagining that his was a sudden conversion to a self-sacrificing love for art, produced by intimacy with Gainsborough.