In this picture the artist has been at the pains to illustrate, without travesty, the end of a good man, stretched stiff on his last couch. By the side of his bed kneel various members of his family, plunged into the deepest affliction; at the head of the bed stands a benevolent-visaged pastor of the church, who has evidently just administered the last consolations of religion to the departed. The burlesque element, which does not interfere with the main group of the sketch, is settled on the action of Death, who, emblematic as usual, is thrusting before him an evil-looking and overfed quackish practitioner, the extortionate physician, who has boldly declared 'he has no time for praying, but demands his honorarium.' The arch foe has fixed his unrelaxing grip upon the shoulder of Doctor Bolus, who it may be presumed has received his last fee. Plate 16. _Death and the Portrait._ Nature and Truth are not at strife, Death draws his pictures after life. A gouty and decrepit corpulent sitter is propped up by cushions and pillows in an arm-chair placed on a raised stage in a painter's studio. From the canvas it appears that the original of this last act of vanity is a judge. The sitter has evidently reached a state of dotage, and the artist has left his slumbering subject to enjoy a more congenial occupation; he is showing a blushing young damsel, who has accompanied the gout-ridden old judge, certain designs, groups of cupids, and the young couple have seemingly established a very agreeable understanding. Death has fantastically perched himself in the artist's seat, and having assumed his brush and palette, is putting the finishing touches both to portrait and sitter. The painter brings the promis'd aid, And views the change that has been made. He sees the picture's altered state, And owns the master-hand of Fate. 'But, why,' he cries, 'should artists grieve When models die,--if _pictures_ live?' Plate 17. _The Genealogist._ On that illumin'd roll of fame Death waits to write your lordship's name. In the escutcheon-panelled ancestral hall of the peer, surrounded by the evidences of antiquity and wealthy ease, the sepulchral visitor, unbidden, lays down his hourglass, and is shown displaying to the affrighted gaze of a fashionably apparelled old couple, the family genealogical table which he has taken the liberty of unrolling for an unexpected addition he is about to make. On that illumined roll of fame Death waits to write your lordship's name. Whether from Priam you descend, Or your dad cried--_Old chairs to mend_, When you are summon'd to your end, You will not shun the fatal blow; And sure you're old enough to know, That though each varying pedigree Begins with _Time_, it ends with _me_! Plate 18. _The Catchpole._ The catchpole need not fear a jail, The undertaker is his bail.