The year 1816 witnessed the second appearance of our painter, and with a picture the title of which affirms his previous practice. This happened at “the Great Room in Spring Gardens,” then, and long before, a frequent place of exhibition, not unlike the present Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, that could be hired for all sorts of shows, and afforded many curious illustrations of the uses to which such a gallery could be put. In the year in question this “Great Room” was in the occupancy of the Society of Painters in Oil and Water Colours--that is, the same association which now flourishes as the Society of Painters in Water Colours, its original title, which had for a time given way to the first-named designation, in consequence of a difficulty about dividing profits among the members, a considerable number of whom seceded, leaving those who remained unable to cover the walls with pictures. In this strait the remaining members invited a certain number of oil painters to contribute to the exhibition, and called the persons who consented to do so Associate-Exhibitors. The seceders comprised J. J. Chalon, De Wint, Gilpin, Hills, Reinagle, and Pugin the elder. David Cox had joined the Society shortly before, and “came to the rescue with a host of pictures;” but these did not suffice, and the expedient of inviting Associate-Exhibitors was employed to increase the popularity of the exhibitions. It is noteworthy that among these “outsiders” who were taken in as stop-gaps was William Henry Hunt, one of the most artistic of English painters; he made his _début_ to the Society, of which he became one of the most distinguished members, in 1814, with two landscapes in oil. Hunt, like Landseer, had previously exhibited in the Royal Academy; he did so in 1807, when Sir Edwin was five years of age. The Society continued to use, until 1824, its style of the times of difficulty, and thereafter reverted to its former title and limits. It is worthy of note that this interval of disturbance had much to do with the bringing out of painters so diverse in their modes of thought as Hunt and Landseer. Haydon also found a field for the exhibition of his power in the gallery of the divided Society. In 1814 the last-named artist sent there “The Judgment of Solomon,” a picture which is admitted to be the best he painted, and to it the attention of Landseer’s biographer is directed, as having probably been purchased, as it was certainly long retained, by his pupil in memory of Haydon. The work passed from Sir Edwin’s possession to that of Lord Ashburton. The connection between the Landseers and Haydon is close. Haydon was, at least in some degree, Edwin Landseer’s third teacher, if we put Nature before his father. In his peculiar way, which has to be taken into account ere we can appreciate the true sense of the following passage, Haydon describes the first entry of John Landseer’s sons to his charge:--