In 1834 many place the attainment of Sir Edwin Landseer’s highest level in art; “Suspense” then appeared at the Academy, with “A Highland Shepherd Dog rescuing Sheep from a Snowdrift,” “A Scene of the olden Time at Bolton Abbey,” and other works. Of these, to our minds, “Suspense” is by far the best picture, and aptest illustration of genius; on this, if we chose, his honour should rest. “In some cases,” says Mr. Redgrave, with reference to it, “the invention of the artist is exerted rather to exercise and call forth the imagination of the spectator than to display his own.” “Suspense” is an excellent example of the pictures of this class. A noble bloodhound is watching at a closed door, shut out, one may imagine, from the wounded knight, his master. There are the steel gloves removed from the now powerless limbs--the torn eagle-plume tells of the deadly strife, and the continuous track on the floor shows how his life-blood flowed away drop by drop as he was borne within. Who does not watch with the faithful hound in deep “suspense” for some token that his master yet lives? Others, again, can read the picture far differently: these may imagine that the dog has tracked the author of some act of violence or deed of blood; the plume, torn from the casque of the struggling man, lies on the floor sprinkled with the blood shed in the struggle ere the victim was borne within the now closed portal; we recognize the scuffle of the moment, his hand clutching the door-post with fearful energy to prevent the closing, the stifled cries, the hopelessness of resistance. Yet there, like a watchful sentinel, waiting in silence, the animal crouches, whose instinct teaches him to follow untiringly the object of his search; the spectator himself waits in anxious eagerness for the reopening of the door, anticipates the spring of the animal and the renewed struggle that will ensue. In the course of Mr. Ruskin’s magnificent criticism on Tintoret, Titian, Velazquez, Veronese, and Landseer, as dog-painters, are remarks on the last-named artist which, however true they are in respect to Landseer’s “drawing-room” pictures, award but scanty justice to the masculine author of “Suspense” and its class.--See “Modern Painters,” 1860, v. pp. 260-3. “The Highland Shepherd Dog rescuing a Sheep from a Snow-drift” tells its own tale, and needs no explanation from us. The sheep is almost smothered, its struggles avail little, but the sagacious “collie” aids it by clearing away the snow.