for the ridiculous; and in the grotesque countenance of a baboon or a bear, the cunning eye of a fox, or the fierce front of a rampant lion, traced the characteristic varieties of the human physiognomy. He soon felt that _the science which appertaineth unto the bearing of coat armour_ was not suited to his taste or talents; and tired of the amphibious many-coloured brood that people the fields of heraldry, listened to the voice of Genius, which whispered him _to read the mind's construction in the face_,--to study and delineate MAN. As the first token of his turn for the _satirical_, it may be worth recording, that while yet an apprentice, when upon a sultry Sunday he once made an excursion to Highgate, two or three of his companions and himself sought shelter and refreshment in one of those convenient _caravanserais_ which so much abound in the vicinity of the metropolis. In the same room were a party of thirsty pedestrians, washing down the dust they had inhaled in their walk, with _London porter_. Two of the company debating upon politics, and the palm of victory being, at the moment Hogarth and his companions entered, adjudged to the taller man, he very vociferously exulted in his conquest, and added some sarcastic remarks on the diminutive appearance of his adversary. The _little_ man had _a great soul_, and having in his right hand a pewter pot, threw it with fatal force at his opponent: it struck him in the forehead,--and "As the mountain oak Nods to the axe, till with a groaning sound It sinks, and spreads its honours on the ground,"-- he sunk to the floor, and there,--as the divine Ossian would have sublimely expressed it,--_The grey mist swam before his eyes. He lay in the hall of mirth as a mountain pine, when it tumbles across the rushy Loda.--He recovered; lifted up his bleeding head, and rolled his full-orbed eyes around. He ascended as a pillar of smoke streaked with fire, and streams of blood ran down his dark brown cheeks, like torrents from the summit of an oozy rock, etc. etc._ To descend from the _pinnacle of Parnassus_ to the _plain of common sense_,--the fellow being deeply, though not dangerously, wounded in the forehead, extreme agony excited a most hideous grin. His _woe-begone_ figure, opposed to the pert triumphant air of his tiny conqueror, and the half suppressed laugh of his surrounding friends, presented a scene too ridiculous to be resisted. The young tyro seized his pencil, drew his first group of portraits from the life, and gave, with a strong resemblance of each, such a grotesque variety of character as evades all description. When we consider this little sketch was his _coup d'essai_, the loss of it is much to be regretted.