This was Sir Edwin’s estimate, made some years since, when, soon after the fever caused by Mr. Bicknell’s remarkably well-managed sale of pictures, the present Earl of Essex met the painter, and asked what he thought “The Cat’s Paw” would produce if it were sold. “About three thousand pounds,” was the answer. At the sale, which occurred in 1863, appeared illustrations of the increase in the value of Landseer’s pictures; thus “The Prize Calf,” which is by no means one of his best works, and for which he four years earlier received four hundred and twenty pounds, was resold for one thousand eight hundred and ninety pounds; “The Twa Dogs,” purchased for three hundred pounds, was sold for two thousand four hundred and fifteen pounds; “The Highland Shepherd,” exhibited in 1850, and bought for three hundred and fifty pounds, brought back again two thousand three hundred and forty-one pounds, ten shillings. As “The Cat’s Paw” now appears, it is hot and dark in tone, if compared with some silvery and more solid productions. It scarcely needs a description, yet we may point out how admirably the incident is told. The scene is a laundry, or ironing-room, probably in some great house, to which a monkey of most crafty and resolute disposition has access. The place is too neat and well-maintained to be part of a poor man’s house. The “ironing-woman” has left her work, the stove is in full combustion, and the hand of some one who appreciated the good things of life has deposited on its level top, together with a flat iron, half-a-dozen ripe sound chestnuts. To the aromatic, appetizing odour of the fruit was probably due the entrance of the monkey, a muscular, healthy beast, who came, dragging his chain, and making his bell rattle. He smelt the fruit and coveted them; tried to steal them off the cooking-place with his own long, lean digits, and burnt his fingers. He looked about for a more effective means and--heedless of the motherhood of a fine cat who, with her kittens, was ensconced in a clothes-basket, where she blandly enjoyed the coverings and the heat--pounced upon Puss, entangled as she was in the wrappings of her ease. Puss resisted at first with offended dignity and wrath at being thus treated before the faces of her offspring. She resisted as a cat only can, with lithe and strenuous limbs; the muscular, light, and vigorous frame of the creature quivered with the stress of her energy; she twisted, doubled her body, buckled herself, so to say, in convulsions of passion and fear, but still, surely, without a notion of the object of her captor. Yet he had by far the best of the struggle, for her tiger-like claws were enveloped in the covering which erst served her so comfortably; and, kicking, struggling, squalling, and squealing as strength departed from her, she flounced about the room, upset the coal-scuttle on the floor, and hurled her mistress’s favourite flower-pot in hideous confusion on the