The pictures of 1868 do not call for any particular mention. On the other hand, there was one in the Academy in 1869 which recalled to our minds all the artist’s power. This was entitled “The Swannery invaded by Sea-Eagles,” and came a great deal nearer to Snyders’s manner than any Landseer had produced for many years; indeed, since youth had ceased with him he rarely worked with so much solidity, firmness, and with such skill as in that which we think his last noble picture. It shows a group of swans’ nests near the mouth of a mountain river. “From the hills that overlook the ocean, the fierce brown birds have descended on the white brood, and attacked them with beaks and claws. One has a big wader by the throat, and just below the bill that vainly bites his thigh, while with a yellow dreadful claw he tears the downy breast of the victim, so that the red blood streams over it, dashing the plumage of snow to the black foot-webs themselves, which vainly quiver on the ground. Yet the swan fights well, and delivers smashing blows with his wings at his tyrant. The effect of this mode of defiance is seen on the body of another eagle, which, with the ravenous yelp of his kind, returns to the attack on a second swan, and will certainly get the best of it. Already dead between her still fighting fellows, a third swan lies prone, with a grey cygnet beside her. In the air above the nest, other swans flutter away, but in vain, for other eagles are there to destroy the last of those who built near the robbers. The design of the picture may be thus explained, but it would be hard to illustrate the painting of the plumage, or the largeness of the style which pervades this, one of the best painted of Sir Edwin’s works. It belongs to Lord Northampton. With this noble painting Sir Edwin’s artistic biography, his _auto-biography_, may well be closed. Succeeding works added nothing to our knowledge of his skill, nor were they calculated to illustrate his genius more fortunately than those which have been enumerated and described. An exceptional painting may fitly have place here; it is described by a correspondent to the “Athenæum,” No. 2396: “To your list of distinguished English artists who have practised scene painting, should be added the name of Sir Edwin Landseer. I have myself seen, in the theatre at Woburn Abbey, a scene painted by him. In the time of the late John, Duke of Bedford, private theatricals were much in vogue at Woburn, and Sir Edwin was then a frequent and honoured visitor, and on one of these occasions he painted the scene in question, which represents the interior of a room, opening in the centre on to a terrace or balcony. In the doorway stands a lady’s dog, marvellously touched, in a listening attitude, with one of the fore-paws uplifted, exhibiting, in a striking degree, all the artist’s wondrous power, even in the coarse and hasty manner incidental to a scene-painter’s art.--H.B.” * * * * *