I have often thought that next to Asclepiades, the comic cynic,[1] Buonaparte Smith was the greatest philosopher that ever existed. B. Smith was by some thought to have been the original of Jeremy Diddler. He was an inveterate borrower of small sums. On a certain Wednesday in 1821, _un sien-ami_ accosted him. Says the friend: “Smith, have you heard that Buonaparte is dead?” To which retorts the philosopher: “Buonaparte be ——!” but I disdain to quote his irreverent expletive—“Buonaparte be somethinged. _Can you lend me ninepence?_” What was the history of Europe or its eventualities to Buonaparte Smith? The immediate possession of three-fourths of a shilling was of far more importance to him than the death of that tremendous exile in his eyrie in the Atlantic Ocean, thousands of miles away. Thus, too, I daresay it was with a certain small philosopher, who lived through a very exciting epoch of the history of England: I mean LITTLE BOY HOGARTH. It was his fortune to see the first famous fifteen years of the eighteenth century, when there were victories as immense as Salamanca or Waterloo; when there was a magnificent parallel to Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, existent, in the person of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough. I once knew a man who had lived in Paris, and throughout the Reign of Terror, in a second floor of the Rue St. Honoré. “What did you do?” I asked, almost breathlessly, thinking to hear of tumbrils, Carmagnoles, gibbet-lanterns, conventions, _poissarde_-revolts, and the like. “_Eh! parbleu_,” he answered, “_je m’occupais d’ornithologie_.” This philosopher had been quietly birdstuffing while royalty’s head was rolling in the gutter, and Carrier was drowning his hundreds at Nantes. To this young Hogarth of mine, what may Marlborough and his great victories, Anne and her “silver age” of poets, statesmen, and essayists, have been? Would the War of the Succession assist young William in learning his accidence? Would their High Mightinesses of the States-General of the United Provinces supply him with that fourpence he required for purchases of marbles or sweetmeats? What had Marshal Tallard to do with his negotiations with the old woman who kept the apple-stall at the corner of Ship Court? What was the Marquis de Guiscard’s murderous penknife compared with that horn-handled, three-bladed one, which the Hebrew youth in Duke’s Place offered him at the price of twentypence, and which he could not purchase, _faute de quoi_? At most, the rejoicings consequent on the battles of Blenheim or Ramillies, or Oudenarde or Malplaquet, might have saved William from a whipping promised him for the morrow; yet, even under those circumstances, it is painful to reflect that staying out too late to see the fireworks, or singeing his clothes at some blazing fagot, might have brought upon him on that very morrow a castigation more unmerciful than the one from which he had been prospectively spared.