The painting of sign-boards, in fact, was long a kind of preparatory school for higher flights of art, and indeed the fashion of pictorial signs nursed many a dormant genius into life and activity. Robert Dalton, who rose to be Keeper of the Pictures to George the Third, had been a painter of signs and coaches; Gwynne, who first performed similar journey-work, became a marine-painter of repute; Smirke, who eventually became R.A.; Ralph Kirby, drawing-master to the Prince of Wales, afterwards George the Fourth; Thomas Wright, of Liverpool, and many more, started life decorating coach-panels or painting signs. Opie, the Cornish peasant-lad who rose to fame in paint, declared that his first steps were of the like nature: “I ha’ painted Duke William for the signs, and stars and such-like for the boys’ kites.” The Royal Academicians of our own time did not begin in this way, and as a pure matter of curious interest it will be found that your sucking painter is too dignified for anything of the kind, and that modern signs painted by artists are usually done for a freak by those who have already long acquired fame and fortune. It is an odd reversal. Thus, very many years ago, Millais painted a “George and Dragon” sign for the “George” inn, Hayes Common. There it hung, exposed to all weathers, and at last faded into a neutral-tinted, very “speculative” affair, when the landlord had it repainted, “as good as new,” by some one described as “a local artist.” Now even the local painter’s work has disappeared, and the great hideous “George” is content without a picture-sign. The most famous of all signs painted by artists is, of course, that of the “Royal Oak” at Bettws-y-Coed, on the Holyhead Road. It was painted by David Cox, in 1847, and, all other tales to the contrary notwithstanding, it was _not_ executed by him, when in sore financial straits, to liquidate a tavern score. David Cox was never of the Morland type of dissolute artist, did not run up scores, paid his rates and taxes, never bilked a tradesman, and was just a home-loving, domesticated man. That he should at the same time have been a great artist, supreme in his own particular field, in his own particular period, is so unusual and unaccountable a thing that it would not be surprising to find some critic-prophet arising to deny his genius because of all those damning circumstances of the commonplace, and the clinching facts that he never wore a velvet jacket, and had his hair cut at frequent intervals. [Illustration: SIGN OF THE “ROYAL OAK,” BETTWS-Y-COED.] The genius of David Cox was not fully realised in his lifetime, and he received very inadequate prices for his works, but he was probably never “hard up,” and he painted the sign-board of the “Royal Oak” merely as a whimsical compliment to his friend, Mrs. Roberts, the landlady of the house, which was still at that time a rural inn.