Bad pictures hot! Bad pictures cold! Bad pictures such a lot! So well sold! This shaft is especially aimed at Sir Francis Grant, P.R.A., and Mr. James Sant, R.A. Millais's famous _Hearts are Trumps_ is neatly hit off in the quatrain:-- Liz, Di, and Mary, cool and airy, How does your garden grow? Azaleas in clumps, and hearts for trumps, And three pretty maids in a row. [Illustration: A POSER ENTHUSIASTIC YOUNG LADY: "Oh, Mr. Robinson, does not it ever strike you in listening to sweet music, that the rudiment of potential infinite pain is subtly woven into the tissue of our keenest joy?"] _Punch_ was in no doubt as to the merits of one of the famous pictures of the year:-- About "Harbours of Refuge," no year But some M.P.'s a valuable talker; But my "Harbour of Refuge" is here And its C.E. is A.R.A. Walker! But he was sadly to seek in his disparagement of Mason's beautiful _Harvest Moon_:-- Sweet, but scamped in every part, Such half-work most students guide ill: The free-masonry of Art Asks more labour, e'en in Idyll. [Illustration: AESTHETIC WITH A VENGEANCE TOM: "I say, old man, now you've got that stunning house of yours, you ought to be looking out for a wife!" RODOLPHUS: "Quite so. I was thinking of one of those Miss Gibsons, don't you know." TOM: "Ah! Let me recommend the _tall_ one, old man. She'll make the best wife in the world!" RODOLPHUS: "Quite so. But the _short_ one seems to harmonize better with the kind of _furniture_ I go in for--_buhl_ and _marqueterie_, don't you know."] [Sidenote: _Sir Edwin Landseer_] Landseer had often been severely handled by _Punch_ for his accommodating courtiership, but when he died in the autumn of 1873, the long set of memorial verses which appeared on October 11 overlook this infirmity and concentrate on Landseer's services as a teacher of sympathy between man and brute. He was the first of painters who "give dumb things a soul"--in the faithful collie in the lone shieling with his head on his master's coffin; in his St. Bernards and antlered monarchs of the glen. It may be objected that the soul which Landseer gave his animals was a human soul and a sentimental one at that, and that Bewick had forestalled him with a more accurate diagnosis; but the insistence on Landseer's services as a promoter of the _entente cordiale_ between man and beast is well justified. Landseer at the moment of his passing was probably, as _Punch_ contends, "our best-known name in Art." The writer of the verses traces the official recognition of artists abroad:-- Till even upon this, our little isle That looms so large in light of various fames, The fair Queen deigned at last, though late, to smile And dubbed her Knights--a few but glorious names. But surely this is to overlook the knighthoods of Van Dyck and Lely (both from the Netherlands), to say nothing of Sir Joshua.