dwellings for the poor have sprung up around it, but
in Hogarth's day it must have been very isolated: not leading to the
water, as we had imagined, but having a dull and prison-like aspect; if,
indeed, any place can have that aspect where trees grow, and grass is
checkered by their ever-varying shadows. The house was occupied from
1814 to 1832 by Cary, the translator of Dante; and it would be worth a
pilgrimage if considered only as the residence of this truly-excellent
and highly-gifted clergyman.
[Illustration: ROOM IN HOGARTH'S HOUSE.]
We have received from his son an interesting note relative to its
features at the period when it came into his father's possession. "The
house," he says, "stands in one corner of a high-walled garden of about
three quarters of an acre, that part of the garden which faced the house
was divided into long, narrow, formal flower-beds. Five large trees,
whose ages bespoke their acquaintance with Hogarth, showed his love of
the beautiful as well as the useful, a mulberry, walnut, apricot,
double-blossomed cherry, and a hawthorn: the last of these was a great
favorite with my father, from its beauty, and the attraction it was to
the nightingale, which never failed to visit it in the spring: the
gardeners were their mortal enemies, and alas, have at length prevailed.
A few years ago, when I went to visit the old place, only one of the
trees remained, (the mulberry seen in our sketch); in a nook at one side
of the garden was a nut-walk, with a high wall and a row of
filbert-trees that arched triumphantly over it; at one end of this walk
was a stone slab, on which Hogarth used to play at nine-pins; at the
other end were the two little tombstones to the memory of a bird and a
dog." The house is as you see it here, the rooms with low ceilings and
all sorts of odd shapes,--up and down, in and out,--yet withal pleasant
and comfortable, and rendered more so by the gentle courtesy of their
mistress and her kindly servant; the very dogs seemed to partake of the
human nature of their protector, and attended us wherever we went, with
more than ordinary civility. Hogarth might have been tempted to
immortalize one of them for its extreme ugliness, and the waggish spirit
with which it pulled at its companion's ears, who in vain attempted to
tug at the bits of stumps that stuck out at either side of its
tormentor's head. Mr. Fairholt was permitted to sketch the drawing room;
the open door leads to the c
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