“Doubtful Crumbs,” at the Academy in 1859, was hardly equal to its origin; a mastiff lolls at the door of his kennel, and a smaller dog looks anxiously for permission to pick up scraps. The picture, with a title in Highland jargon, in the catalogue of the Royal Academy Exhibition of this year, displayed how a hunted stag escaped two dogs by taking to the water. One of the dogs is hurt to death; the other is about to leave the stag. It was finely and vigorously designed, not less slight than of late from the painter. “The Prize Calf” showed, with a slight touch of humour, a frightened girl leading a calf through a mountain pass. “A kind Star” illustrated a Highland superstition, but in such a manner as proved that the designer’s mind was not in its usual fine tone when it was conceived. The superstition is that hinds are under the protection of beneficent stars: a hind lies dying on the banks of a lake. So far nothing could be said; but the introduction of a spirit, with a star in its hair, to bend over the poor beast, was of quite another order of invention. The production of this idea was the first decided sign of decay in the powers of our artist. Those who owed him much delight stood aghast before it. Some of these tried to ascribe its exhibition, and even its production, to obedience to some unfrequent impulse--deference to some inferior mind, subservience to some vulgar taste. However this might be, there, unfortunately, it was. The year 1860 put the artist before us as effectively as before, and gave what is probably the strongest of all his pictures, the “Flood in the Highlands,” as to which I cannot do better than borrow from the “Athenæum” of the time the following description, which has the freshest impression because I wrote it on the day when, in the well-known St. John’s Wood studio, and before the picture was sent to the Royal Academy, Mr. Millais introduced me to Sir Edwin Landseer:--“By right of seniority let Landseer come first. His subject is a flood in the Highlands, one of those catastrophes to which villages situated in gorges of a mountain country are exposed by the sudden melting of snow on the hills, or heavy falls of rain, which, swelling the little rivulets, often overwhelm a valley-hamlet at a sweep. The great flood, rushing from the hill-side, rages through the street; up to the very thresholds of the houses it pours along, a torrent irregular and resistless. Behind the village a range of low hillocks bear a few scanty trees, in the boughs of which some black birds have taken refuge, telling the wide extent of the inundation. The water has drowned the adjacent country, bearing along with it multitudes of farming implements and the _débris_ of the swept district. The inhabitants have taken refuge on the roofs of their cottages. Upon one, in the mid-distance, are men urgently endeavouring to save a team, which, borne onwards by the torrent, struggles relentlessly against its force, and, mad with