Hitherto we have seen painting in England confined to foreign artists, or to natives who more or less slavishly copied them. We have seen, likewise, that many of the English painters of the latter days of the seventeenth century were decorators rather than artists, who, forsaking all truth and nature, covered the walls and ceilings of houses with simpering shepherdesses and impossible deities. The time of change came, however, and with it the man who was to be the first original painter of his country. It is to plain William Hogarth, the son of the Cumberland schoolmaster, the apprentice of the silver-plate engraver, Ellis Gamble, that we owe the origin of the English school of painting. The term "school of painting" is, however, hardly correct, as Hogarth founded no school, nor has there existed one in England till very recently. We should rather say that Hogarth was the first English artist who forsook exhausted conventionalities for large truthfulness and original thought, and thus paved the way to a new life in art. A man who laughed at the "black masters," as he called the painters of the most popular works of the period; and who declared that copying other men's pictures was like pouring wine from one vessel to another, a process which did not increase the quality, and allowed the flavour to evaporate, was naturally regarded as an innovator of a monstrous order. Like all reformers, Hogarth had to defeat opposition and ridicule. But he dared to think for himself, and in that courage lay the secret of success. [Illustration: WILLIAM HOGARTH AND HIS DOG TRUMP. _By_ HOGARTH. _In the National Gallery._]