he Scotch isles, including the Orkneys, to Norway. This is not what is
understood to be the history of Orkney.

In the middle of the ninth century, Harold Harfager, one of the reguli
of Norway, subdued the other petty rulers, and made himself king of the
whole country. The defeated party fled to Orkney, and other islands of
the west: whence, betaking themselves to piracy, they returned to ravage
the coast of Norway. Harold pursued them to their places of refuge, and
conquered and colonised Orkney about A.D. 875. The Norwegians at that
time destroyed or expelled the race then inhabiting these islands. They
are supposed to have been Picts, and to have received Christianity at an
earlier date, but it is doubtful if there were Christians in Orkney at
that period: however, Depping says expressly, that Earl Segurd, the
second Norwegian earl, expelled the Christians from these isles. I may
remark, that the names of places in Orkney and Zetland are Norse, and
bear descriptive and applicable meanings in that tongue; but hesitate to
extend these names beyond the Norwegian colonisation, and to connect
them with the Picts or other earlier inhabitants. No argument can be
founded on the rude and miserable subterraneous buildings called Picts'
houses, which, if they ever were habitations, or anything else than
places of refuge, must have belonged to a people in a very low grade of
civilisation. Be this as it may, Orkney and Zetland remained under the
Norwegian dominion from the time of Harold Harfager till they were
transferred to Scotland by the marriage treaty in 1468, a period of
about six hundred years. What cannot easily be accounted for, is the
discovery of two Orkney and Zetland deeds of the beginning of the
fifteenth century prior to the transfer, written not in Norse, but in
the Scottish language.

R. W.

* * * * *

HOGARTH'S PICTURES.

(Vol. vii., p. 339.)

The numerous and interesting inquiries of AN AMATEUR respecting a
catalogue of Hogarth's works has brought to my recollection the
discovery of one of them, which I was so fortunate as to see in its
original situation. About the year 1815 I was invited by a friend, who
was an artist, to visit a small public-house in Leadenhall Street, to
see a picture by Hogarth: it was "The Elephant," since, I believe,
pulled down, being in a ruinous condition. In the tap-room, on the wall,
almost obscured by the dirt and smoke, and grimed by the ru