“Alexander and Diogenes,” another of the pictures of 1848, is well known; the big white bulldog Alexander pays a visit to the philosopher in his tub, personified by a dingy, meditative little beast in inferior condition of health and of poor belongings. He appears to be a farrier’s tyke, to judge by the box of nails, with its thumb-hole, and the hammer, which lie before the tub; and he is undoubtedly of abstemious habits, if we may judge by the “rope” of onions and the herbs suspended at the side of his place of shelter, and the potatoes which lie on the flag-stones. The big white bully, with his “military” collar, stands before the tub, and, regarding its cynical occupant askant, knits his brows--not a dog’s action, by-the-bye--at once inquiringly and with hauteur. The courtiers are commonplace; two are whining, with hypocritical mouths turned down, the one has upcast eyes, the other is self-absorbed in meditation, and with his eyes dreamily half-closed, occupies part of the background. A greyhound, of the gentler sex, whose collar is decorated with a hawk’s bell, and is herself a courtier, is courted by the sneaking little spaniel with the set smile on his lips, and adulatory eyes as lustrous as globes of glass. A contumelious spaniel of another breed is near, and, with nose upturned and scornful, looks at the more scornful and not less insincere cynic, who, with greater pride, tramples on the pride of Alexander. This year (1848) produced the “Sketch of my Father,” that capital portrait of John Landseer to which we have already alluded. In the same year appeared a series of etchings by C. G. Lewis, styled “The Mothers, by Edwin Landseer,” from drawings made in 1837. This publication was the last in which our artist had direct concern. In 1848 Landseer received from the “Commissioners on the Fine Arts” a charge to paint in oil three subjects connected with the chase, for compartments of the Peers’ Refreshment Room in the Houses of Parliament; the absurdly inadequate price was not to be more than 500_l._ each. It is evident that Landseer accepted these tasks patriotically rather than in hope of profit. However, the matter came to nothing, for after a sharp debate, rather a skirmish than a fight, when this great sum of 1500_l._ was proposed as the national payment to a great artist for three important pictures, the House of Commons, piqued at the conduct of the scheme for decorating the Palace of Westminster, struck the sum from the estimates, and put an end to the affair; more to the artist’s profit than ours. The pictures of 1849, although comprising “The Free Church” and “The Evening Scene in the Highlands,” [Illustration: _Sow and Pigs._]