The labours of Rubens and Vandyke under Charles, especially the Banqueting-House at Whitehall by the former, continue to show that history was not unpatronized. Still no English school can properly be said to have been formed till the eighteenth century, when Sir James Thornhill, in the reign of Queen Anne, was appointed historical painter to the court. The works of this artist are numerous, and we are disposed to rank them higher than they are commonly appreciated. Those in St. Paul's and at Greenwich are well known; and though it be questionable whether they could have been much better executed by any other artist at that time in Europe, yet so miserable was the encouragement, that Thornhill is reported to have been paid for some of these labours by the square yard for two pounds. Thus the annals of historical painting in England furnish little to reward research or to interest the reader, previous to the appearance of Hogarth, born 1698, in the Old Bailey, the son of a schoolmaster, and died in 1764, being the first native artist who proved that there existed subject in our manners, and talent in our land, for other painting than portrait. Hogarth claims the highest praise of genius; he was an original inventor; nay, more, he both struck out a new path, and qualified himself to walk therein. From an engraver of armorial bearings and ornaments on plate, he taught himself to be a painter. The aim of no artist has been more mistaken, at least estimated on principles more opposed, than that of Hogarth. Some have ranked him as a satirical, some as a grotesque painter, while others have not scrupled to rate him merely as a caricaturist. If, however, historical painting consist in the delineation of manners, in the expression of sentiment, and in striking representation of natural character, few names in art will stand higher than Hogarth; while, beyond most painters, he has extended the bounds of the art, in the alliance which he has formed between the imagination and the heart,--between amusing of the external sense and the profound reflections thus awakened. His pictures are not merely passing scenes, or momentary actions; they are profound moral lessons. It is this which raises him far above the Dutch or Flemish school, with whose general imitation of national customs, his firm and individual grasp of the morality of common life has with great injustice been confounded. From the lofty abstractions of the Italian masters, again, he differs widely, but not, as usually supposed, because he represents low, but because he paints real life. In this respect, the observation of Walpole, that, 'Hogarth's place is between the Italians, whom we may consider as epic poets and tragedians; and the Flemish painters, who are as writers of farce, and editors of burlesque nature,' is founded in utter mistake, or misrepresentation; he never forgave the artist's independence of his _connoisseurship_. Hogarth's place is not between, but above and apart.