nt divine and philosopher who represents the good
principle in that novel--"that no man can descend below himself, in doing
any act which may contribute to protect an innocent person, _or to bring a
rogue to the gallows_." The moralists of that age had no compunction you
see; they had not begun to be sceptical about the theory of punishment,
and thought that the hanging of a thief was a spectacle for edification.
Masters sent their apprentices, fathers took their children, to see Jack
Sheppard or Jonathan Wild hanged, and it was as undoubting subscribers to
this moral law, that Fielding wrote and Hogarth painted. Except in one
instance, where in the mad-house scene in the _Rake's Progress_, the girl
whom he has ruined is represented as still tending and weeping over him in
his insanity, a glimpse of pity for his rogues never seems to enter honest
Hogarth's mind. There's not the slightest doubt in the breast of the jolly
Draco.

The famous set of pictures called "Marriage a la Mode", and which are
exhibited at Marlborough House [1853], in London, contains the most
important and highly wrought of the Hogarth comedies. The care and method
with which the moral grounds of these pictures are laid is as remarkable
as the wit and skill of the observing and dexterous artist. He has to
describe the negotiations for a marriage pending between the daughter of a
rich citizen Alderman and young Lord Viscount Squanderfield, the
dissipated son of a gouty old earl. Pride and pomposity appear in every
accessory surrounding the earl. He sits in gold lace and velvet--as how
should such an earl wear anything but velvet and gold lace? His coronet is
everywhere: on his footstool on which reposes one gouty toe turned out; on
the sconces and looking-glasses; on the dogs; on his lordship's very
crutches; on his great chair of state and the great baldaquin behind him;
under which he sits pointing majestically to his pedigree, which shows
that his race is sprung from the loins of William the Conqueror, and
confronting the old alderman from the City, who has mounted his sword for
the occasion, and wears his alderman's chain, and has brought a bag full
of money, mortgage-deeds, and thousand-pound notes, for the arrangement of
the transaction pending between them. Whilst the steward (a Methodist,
therefore a hypocrite and cheat, for Hogarth scorned a Papist and a
Dissenter) is negotiating between the old couple, their children sit
together, united but