The writer of an obituary of Charles Landseer, who died in July, 1879, records an interesting incident connected with that artist’s picture, “The Eve of the Battle of Edgehill.” This, perhaps his best work, was painted in 1845. When it was nearly finished, Edwin Landseer was asked by Charles to come and look at it; and remarking that it was a very good picture, but “How nice a spaniel would look in that corner!” Charles said, “Will you put it in, then?” At which the master took up the brush, and at once painted in a fine old English spaniel with some leather dispatch-bags lying on the ground by him. The picture was duly exhibited and admired, the spaniel especially; but the dealer who bought it, being a simple man of business, bethought him that Sir Edwin’s dog would be worth more than the whole picture. So he coolly cut it out and sold it, filling the place by a common dog copied from it. Several years afterwards the owner of the picture showed Sir Edwin, with some pride, the picture in which he had painted the dog; but the great master declared “he’d be hanged if ever he did that dog.” The picture was examined more closely, and then the trick was found out. The identical picture, as cut out and put on another canvas, was sold shortly before Charles Landseer’s death at Christie’s, in the collection of the late Mr. White, for the sum of £43! THE SONNET. By WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room; And hermits are contented with their cells; And students with their pensive citadels: Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom, Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom, High as the highest peak of Furness-fells, Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells: In truth, the prison unto which we doom Ourselves, no prison is: and hence to me, In sundry moods ’twas pastime to be bound Within the Sonnet’s scanty plot of ground; Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be) Who have felt the weight of too much liberty, Should find brief solace there, as I have found. A TOUR ROUND THE WORLD. By MRS. JOSEPH COOK.