The Progresses were a development of the Conversation Pieces, of which “The Wanstead Assembly” was probably the first. This, which is now in the South London Art Gallery, proves to be “The Dance,” one of the illustrations to the “Analysis of Beauty.” I confess to finding the stiff and elegant breeding of these Conversation Pieces more attractive and certainly more amusing than many of his livelier scenes. Almost any of the Conversation Pieces could appositely illustrate a novel by Miss Ferrier. There was one at the Old Masters’ Exhibition of 1910, “The Misses Cotton and their Niece,” quite accurately described as “four ladies seated near a tea-table, with their backs to the fireplace; a fifth is standing, and a servant on the left is bringing a chair for her.” Equally “nice,” I am sure, were “The Rich Family,” “The Wood Family,” “The Cock Family,” and “The Jones Family,” and at the opposite pole to the bad Hogarth that was exhibited in the same room at Burlington House, supposed to be a memory of his five days’ trip down the river to Sheppey. But it is unfair to judge Hogarth by “The Disembarkation”: that was a _jeu d’esprit_, composed of “amusing incidents.” The Conversation Pieces having novelty, succeeded for a few years. We esteem them as the ‘prentice work of a man of abounding energy and versatility, who was as conspicuous for his taste as for his lack of it. Hogarth seems to have had no particular prepossession towards beauty, but beauty occurs again and again in his paintings. The face of the little wanton lady in the second scene of “Marriage à la Mode” is a delight; some of the heads of his servants are haunting. Leslie has drawn attention to the exquisite prettiness of Juno in “Strolling Actresses Dressing in a Barn,” and Mr. Dion Calthorp has written a whole charming article on the handsome drummeress of “Southwark Fair.” Every student of Hogarth must have been struck by his sudden statements of beauty in ugly places, and of atrocities of bad taste anywhere. There is an episode in the “Night Scene, Charing Cross,” that is disgusting, and I confess that the gobbling alderman in one of the “Industrious Apprentice” series gives me nausea. But he is never commonplace or feeble. This astonishing man will paint a head here with the finish of a Terburg, there with the gusto of a Raeburn.