As one, Reader, who concludes haply, through hearsay, that his uncle William has left him a ten pound legacy; but, going afterwards to Doctors’ Commons, paying his shilling, and reading that said uncle’s will,—receiving letters from stately lawyers, full of congratulation, at seventy pence a piece,—being bowed and kotoued to by people who were wont to cut him, and overwhelmed with offers of unlimited credit by tradesfolk who yesterday would not trust to the extent of a pair of woollen hose—discovers that he has inherited a fine fortune; so may an author scarcely help feeling who has commenced a modest little series of papers in the hope that they would fill a gap and serve a turn, and who finds himself, now, roaming through a vast country, inexhaustible in fertility, undermined with treasure, and overstocked with game: of all which he is expected to give a faithful and accurate report. Yes, the world Hogarthian is all before me, where to choose. Facilities for “opening up” the teeming territory present themselves on every side. Authorities accumulate; microscopes and retrospective spy-glasses are obligingly lent. The Chamberlain of London politely throws open his archives. I am permitted to inspect a Hogarth-engraved silver-plate, forming part of the paraphernalia of the famous past-Overseer’s box of St. Margaret’s, Westminster. Father Prout sends me from Paris an old Hogarth etching he has picked up on the Quai Voltaire, and, withal, more humour and learning in a sheet of letter-paper than ever I shall have in my head in a lifetime. A large-minded correspondent in Cheshire insists on tearing a portrait and biography of W. H. from an old book in his possession, and sending the fragments to me. From the blue shadows of the Westmoreland Fells comes, by book-post, a copy of “Aid Hoggart’s” poems. A friend promises to make interest with the authorities of the Painters’ Company for any Hogarthian memorabilia their records may contain. Another friend advises that I should straightway memorialise the Benchers of the Honourable Society of Lincolns’ Inn, for information relative to W. H’s entertainment by the “Sages de la Ley,” A.D. 1750. I am bidden to remember that I should visit the Foundling Hospital, to see the _March to Finchley_; that there are original Hogarths in Sir John Soane’s Museum, and in the church of St. Mary Redclyffe, Bristol.[9] And, upon my word, I have a collection of correspondence about Hogarth that reads like an excerpt from the _Clergy List_. Their reverences could not be more prolific of pen and ink were I a heterodox Bampton Lecturer. How many times I have been clerically reminded of a blunder I committed (in No. I.) in assigning a wrong county as the locality of St. Bee’s College. How many times I have been enlightened as to the derivation of the hangman’s appellation of Jack Ketch. From rectories, parsonages, endowed grammar schools, such corrections, such explanations, have flowed in amain. Not