Next to this house is another large house, built by Portman Seymour, Esq., which ‘being laid into Leicester House, was inhabited by their present Majesties’ (George II. and Queen Caroline) ‘when Prince and Princess of Wales.’ It was then that it was called ‘the pouting place of princes.’ Lisle Street is then described as coming out of Prince’s Street, and runs up to Leicester Garden wall. Both Lisle and Leicester Streets are ‘large and well-built, and inhabited by gentry.’ In 1737 the ‘Country Journal, or Craftsman,’ for April 16, contained the following acceptable announcement: ‘Leicester Fields is going to be fitted up in a very elegant manner, a new wall and rails to be erected all round, and a basin in the middle, after the manner of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and to be done by a voluntary subscription of the inhabitants.’ It was to Hogarth’s house Walpole went, in 1761, to see Hogarth’s picture of Fox. Hogarth said he had promised Fox, if he would only sit as the painter liked, ‘to make as good a picture as Vandyck or Rubens could.’ Walpole was silent. ‘Why, now,’ said the painter, ‘you think this very vain. Why should not a man tell the truth?’ Walpole thought him mad, but Hogarth was sincere. When, after ridiculing the opinions of Freke, the anatomist, some one said, ‘But Freke holds you for as good a portrait-painter as Vandyck,’ ‘There he’s right!’ cried Hogarth. ‘And so, by G----, I am--give me my time, and let me choose my subject.’ If one great object of art be to afford pleasure, Hogarth has attained it, for he has pleased successive generations. If one great end of art be to afford instruction, Hogarth has shown himself well qualified, for he has reached that end; he taught his contemporaries, and he continues teaching, and will continue to teach, through his works. But is the instruction worth having? Is the pleasure legitimate, wholesome, healthy pleasure? Without disparagement to a genius for all that was great in him and his productions, the reply to these questions may sometimes be in the negative. The impulses of the painter were not invariably of noble origin. It is said that the first undoubted sign he gave of having a master-hand arose from his poor landlady asking him for a miserable sum which he owed her for rent. In his wrath he drew her portrait _in caricatura_. Men saw that it was clever, but vindictive.