They are said to represent the _Wanstead assembly_, and contain portraits of the first Earl Tylney, his Countess, their children, tenants, etc. In the tall young lady he has evidently aimed at Milton's description of motion--_smooth sliding without step_; but her _air_ is affected. Her noble partner was originally intended for a portrait of the present King, then Prince of Wales; and though I learn from Mr. Walpole that it was afterward altered to the first Duke of Kingston, still retains so much of its original designation as to bear a resemblance. The design was made about the year 1728, and might be a just representation of the Wanstead belles and beaux; but since that period we have had so many ship-loads of _grace_ imported from the Continent, and such numbers of _well-educated gentlemen_,[21] who have exerted their talents in perfecting this _divine art_, that the picture would not do for the present day. The _sighing_ Celadon, privately delivering a letter _fraught with love_ to his fair Amelia, is evidently the native of a country that has furnished many of our English heiresses with _good_ husbands. Her impatient father's watch is precisely twelve, which determines what were then thought late hours, on so particular an occasion as a wedding-ball, the sketch being originally designed for a series illustrative of _a happy marriage_.[22] Hogarth is said to have boasted that each of the hats which lie upon the floor are so characteristic of their respective proprietors, that any man who understood the form of the human _caput_ might assign each to its owner. Among them is a cushion, which was formerly part of the ball-room furniture, for what was called _the cushion-dance_, in the progress of which the gentleman kneels down and salutes his partner. The light diffused from the chandelier shows an attention to nature worthy the study and imitation of many modern painters, whose figures are illuminated by _beams unaccountable_! Thus much may suffice for the prints; as to the book, a pen was not Hogarth's instrument. His life had been devoted to the study of the pencil; and however clear in idea, he felt the consciousness that his language might be rendered more worthy public attention by the advice and assistance of literary friends. This he acknowledges, in the style of a man who felt that his character did not depend on the power of constructing a sentence, in which branch of the work he was aided by Doctor Hoadley, Doctor Morrell, and his friend the Reverend Mr. Townley,[23] whose son told me, that when his father corrected the first sheet, he found a _plentiful crop of errors_; the second and third were less incorrect; and the fourth much more accurate than the preceding. Such is the power of genius, whatever its direction.