worship, and on their refusing, they were dragged before the prefect,
who condemned them to death, July 19, A.D. 304. They are generally
represented with earthen vessels and the palms of martyrdom; in this
case, the broken statue of Venus lies in the foreground. The Giralda
tower, the chief ornament of Seville, and the prototype of the Madison
Square tower in New York City, is their especial care, and it is
believed that its preservation from lightning is due to them.]

No greater contrast could be devised than the four works which follow,
either in the character of the art or in the uneventful respectability
of the painters' lives. They are all typical of a class of pictures
which has been popular in England, from the time of Hogarth to the
present day. The earliest of them is the "Blind Fiddler" of Sir David
Wilkie, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1807. The dates at
which the others, by Mulready, Webster, and Leslie, were painted would
preclude their appearance here, if strict chronological sequence were
imposed, as they were painted about 1840. It is instructive,
however, to group them together, to show that these artists and their
followers, who were legion, thought at least as much of subject as of
method. Not that the latter quality is lacking. On the contrary, it
is only too evident; but it is a method of convention. No one would
imagine for a moment, in looking at any one of these pictures, that
he was admitted an unseen spectator to some scene of intimate family
life. It is this quality which the great Dutchmen in all their scenes
of familiar life preserved; and when we look at a Pieter de Hooge,
for instance, there is no suspicion that the homely scene has been
arranged for our delectation. In its transplantation from Holland,
however, English art lost just this quality.

David Wilkie, born in Scotland, at Cults in Fifeshire, November 18,