of a young, beautiful, and virtuous woman, who read her Bible, and loved her husband with unceasing tenderness; and casting to the winds the mock morality and lip-virtue that fear to speak of the things depicted in this _Progress_, I say that no right-minded man or woman will be the worse for studying its phases. Some time before Hogarth painted the _Harlot’s Progress_, a hundred and thirty years ago, Edward Ward and Tom Brown had described in coarse, untranscribable, but yet graphic terms, the career of these unfortunates. The former, although a low-lived pottlepot at the best of times, makes some honest remarks concerning the barbarous treatment of the women in Bridewell.[11] “It’s not the way to reform ’em,” he says, plainly. But Hogarth first told the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. He first told the story of a courtesan without either ribald jesting or sickly sentimentality; and he much more than if he had been a royal duke mincingly handling trowel and mallet, laid the first stone of the Magdalen Hospital. “_Ora_,” writes an appreciative Venetian biographer of Hogarth, “_conduce una bella dalla barca in cui nacque ad un albergo di Londra, da un magnifico palazzo in un lupanare, dal lupanare in prigione, dalla prigione all’ ospitale, dall’ ospitale alla fossa_.” This is the tersest summary I know. The Venetian loses not a word. From the cottage where she was born to an inn; from an inn to a palace; thence to a bagnio, thence to prison, thence to a sick-room, thence to the grave. This is the history of Kate Hackabout.