Something perilous was it for an imaginative boy to pore over the plates in the Trusler-Nichols-Ireland book, in the propriety of a well-ordered home. Had life ever been so odd, so ugly, so crowded, so forced? Did that terrible madhouse scene in “The Rake’s Progress” ever really happen? Did God permit such a travesty of love and life as the “Gin Lane” episode, or such ghastly horrors as “The Four Stages of Cruelty”? But there were some engravings that the boy thought infinitely amusing. One was “Time Smoking a Picture,” and another was the delightful “False Perspective.” The twelve plates of “Industry and Idleness” fascinated him (he was too young to understand the moral of “The Harlot’s Progress”), but “A Woman Swearing her Child to a Rich Citizen” seemed so enigmatically stupid that he never looked at it again. “The Altar-piece of St. Clement Danes Church” puzzled him. He knew enough of art to be aware that Hogarth was a strong and powerful draughtsman. Why, then, had he made and published this silly, weak illustration of angels and harps? The boy addressed the question to his uncle, and that gentleman, having perused the accompanying text, answered, “It was a burlesque of William Kent’s altar-piece.” Whereupon the boy put the obvious question: “Who was William Kent?” Uncle was silent, because, like the Master of Balliol on a certain occasion, he had nothing to say. IV WHO WAS WILLIAM KENT? Who was William Kent? What is the record of the plump, self-satisfied dandy whose likeness may be seen at the National Portrait Gallery? [Illustration: PLATE V.--MARRIAGE À LA MODE (In the National Gallery, London) Scene II. of this matchless series, the finest pictorial satire of the century. It is called “Shortly after Marriage.” We are in the peer’s breakfast-room. The clock marks twenty minutes after twelve in the morning, the candles beneath the portraits of the four saints in the inner room are guttering, a dog sniffs at a lady’s cap protruding from the husband’s pocket, and the book peeping from the coat of the old steward is called “Regeneration.” Hogarth never stayed his hand. The details are innumerable, amusing, italicised. What could be more exquisite than the characterisation of the lady, her pretty, dissolute, provocative face, and the abandon of the peer, too bored and tired, after his night’s debauch, even to think of remorse. This “pictur’d moral” series, containing six scenes, was painted by Hogarth in 1745, and was purchased by Mr. Lane of Hillingdon in 1751 for £126.] Do you like this ruddy round-faced man with the eloquent eye, the double chin, and the thick lips? His clothes are certainly attractive--the red velvet turban and the fawn-coloured jacket open at the front showing the frilled shirt. Bartholomew Dandridge, that “eminent face painter,” painted this portrait.