The “Roebuck and rough Hounds,” a picture of 1840, represented a broken hill-side, where a young deer has fallen from one of its ledges to a lower table of rock, where the dogs have found it, and now guard the spoil until the huntsmen come. There are four dogs; one behind the prone head of the prey has the vantage-ground for watching, and looks out with globe-like, glistening eyes. Lower is a rough deer-hound, lapping blood as it flows from the buck. In front, and at the foot, are the heads of the other dogs, one with a placid expression, the other expectant of a step. It is now at South Kensington. Another work of this year was the famous “Laying down the Law.” The picture belongs to the Duke of Devonshire, and is too well known to need description here; suffice it that, in our opinion, it shows one of the best of Landseer’s designs of that class, by investing animals with human expressions and feelings; it is to be looked on less as an animal-picture proper than as a representation of human passions in animal forms. We must accept this non-natural characteristic, this artistic heresy, otherwise the work is naught; notwithstanding all possible objections, it is never less than a fascinating satire, one of those works which override principles by innate strength. In 1841 Sir Edwin did not contribute to the Academy. In 1840, 1841, 1842, 1843, and 1844, the Queen and Prince Albert amused themselves by etching certain designs by Landseer: impressions from these plates are very scarce. These transcripts are named in Mr. Algernon Graves’ catalogue of Sir Edwin’s works, p. 41. “Otters and Salmon,” one of the pictures of 1842, shows the fruit of one of those visits to the Highlands which, since the tour was made with Leslie, were annual: it has been finely engraved by Mr. Gibbon. It exhibits a huge silver salmon lying on its flank, and a long-bodied, long-waisted, brown otter, cringing stealthily at the side of the fish, showing his teeth, and turning half round, snarling in the fashion of his kind. The year 1843 found the painter at work on the fresco for the garden-house at Buckingham Palace; it represents “The Defeat of Comus,” of which the sketch in oil was given to the nation by Mr. Jacob Bell. But to return to the otter. This proved the artist at work on a novel theme, which he made his own by the well-known “Otter speared” of 1844. So various had been the painter’s studies in sporting subjects,--including wild cattle, dogs of all kinds, horses of all sorts, fish, deer, ptarmigan, swans, rats, ducks, eagles, hawks, falcons, otters, to say nothing of lions; and huntsmen of all English ranks--that people naturally fancied Sir Edwin was a keen sportsman. Nevertheless, such was by no means the case; in truth, he often carried the gun as an introduction to the sketch-book.