reception; it was a bold innovation on the cold stilted style of the day, and its terrible _reality_ stirred the hearts of all beholders. _A Rake's Progress_, in eight plates, was scarcely so popular, and the professors of the kind of art which Hogarth had satirised found many faults with the reformer. Hogarth was now a person of consequence, and the once unknown and struggling artist was the talk of the town. _The Sleeping Congregation_ is a satire on the heavy preachers and indifferent church-goers of that period. _The Distressed Poet_ and _A Midnight Modern Conversation_ soon followed. The latter, in which most of the figures are actual portraits, is considered in France and Germany the best of this master's single works. In due course appeared _The Enraged Musician_, of which a wit of the day observed that "it deafens one to look at it," and _The Strolling Actresses_, which Allan Cunningham describes as "one of the most imaginative and amusing of all the works of Hogarth."[G] One of the best of Hogarth's life stories is the _Marriage a la Mode_, the original paintings of which are in the National Gallery; they appeared in prints in 1745. These well-known pictures illustrate the story of a loveless marriage, where parents sacrifice their children, the one for rank the other for money. Mr. Redgrave ("A Century of Painters") tells us that "the novelty of Hogarth's work consisted in the painter being the inventor of his own drama, as well as painter, and in the way in which all the parts are made to tend to a dramatic whole; each picture dependent on the other, and all the details illustrative of the complete work. The same characters recur again and again, moved in different tableaux with varied passions, one moral running through all, the beginning finding its natural climax in the end." Some of the most striking points in the satire of Hogarth's picture are brought out in the background, as in the first picture of _Marriage a la Mode_, where the works of "the black masters" are represented ludicrously, and the ceiling of the room is adorned with an unnatural picture of the destruction of the Egyptians in the Red Sea. In 1750 appeared _The March of the Guards to Finchley_, which is "steeped in humour and strewn with absurdities." It was originally dedicated to George II., but, so the story goes, the King was offended by a satire on his Guards, and he declared "I hate boetry and bainting; neither one nor the other ever did any good." Certain it is that Hogarth was disappointed by the reception of his work, and dedicated it to the King of Prussia. The painting of _The March to Finchley_, on publication of the print, was disposed of by lottery, and won by the Foundling Hospital. We cannot do more than mention some of the remaining works by which the satirist continued "to shoot Folly as she flies." _Beer Street_, and _Gin Lane_, illustrate the advantages of drinking the national beverage, and the miseries following the use of gin.