Then there was William Hamilton, a prolific and prevalent artist. Sent to Italy in his youth by Robert Adam, the architect, he returned with a sort of Italianate style of storied design, classical, historical, allegorical, conventional; but, happily, he developed a light, pretty and decorative manner of treating simple familiar subjects, which was pleasing alike to engravers and public. The charming plates from Thomson’s _Seasons_, engraved by Tomkins and Bartolozzi; the graceful set of _The Months_ by Bartolozzi and Gardiner; the idyllic _Morning_ and _Evening_ by Tomkins, with _Noon_ and _Night_ by Delattre, the numerous designs of children at play, such as _Summer’s Amusement_, _Winter’s Amusement_, _How Smooth, Brother! feel again_, _The Castle in Danger_, by Gaugain; _Breaking-up_ and _The Masquerade_ by Nutter; _Blind Man’s Buff_ and _Sea-Saw_, _Children feeding Fowls_, _Children playing with a Bird_, by Knight; _Playing at Hot Cockles_, and others by Bartolozzi: these are among the prettiest colour-prints of the period and the most valued to-day--especially _The Months_. Hamilton’s work just synchronised with the popular vogue for the coloured stipple, and without these prints how much should we know of an artist so esteemed in his day, and so industrious? One might almost ask the same of Francis Wheatley, whose popularity also survives but through the engraver’s medium. It was only after his return from Dublin, where he might have continued to the end as a prosperous portrait-painter had not Dublin society discovered that the lady it had welcomed as Mrs. Wheatley was somebody else’s wife, that Wheatley began painting those idealised urban, rustic, and domestic subjects, which gave him such contemporary vogue and led to his prompt admission among the Royal Academicians. Had he never painted anything else he would always be remembered by his thirteen _Cries of London_, published by Colnaghi at intervals between 1793 and 1797, and so familiar to us through the accomplished copper-plates of the Schiavonetti brothers, Vendramini, Gaugain and Cardon, though, alas! so wretchedly hackneyed through the innumerable paltry reproductions. But what a fascinating, interesting set of prints it is! How redolent of old lavender! How clean, serene, and country-town-like the London streets appear; how sweet and fragrant they seem to smell; how idyllic the life in them! As one looks at these prints one can almost fancy one hears the old cries echoing through those quiet Georgian streets. Perhaps the London streets of 1795 were not quite so dainty as Wheatley’s sympathetic pencil makes them look to have been. But, remember, that in those days lovely ladies in muslin frocks and printed calicoes of the new fashion, who had sat to Reynolds, and whose portraits were in the print-shop windows, were still being carried in the leisurely sedan-chair, and there were many pretty airs and graces to be seen; while in those streets, too, the