Cries of London--A Charm for a Democracy--An Artist Travelling in Wales--Nautical Characters--An Irish howl--Etchings after the old masters--St. Giles's Courtship--St. James's Courtship--Connoisseurs--Horse Accomplishments--Comforts of the City--Procession of a Country Corporation--Forget and Forgive--A Note of Hand--Legerdemain--A Bankrupt Cart, or the Road to Ruin in the East--Subjects engraved after designs by Bunbury--Distress--Hungarian and Highland Broadsword Exercise--Loyal Volunteers of London and the Environs 354
Buyers and readers of books, all admirers of pictures, drawings, and engravings--in a word, the intelligent, and, let us hope, larger proportion of the community--are well aware, if they are inclined to search for information in respect to the celebrities of art, or would inquire into the personal careers of the renowned pioneers and practitioners of the serious branches of the profession, of whatever period, school, or nationality, that numerous sources of reference, tolerably easy of access, are open to the seeker without being driven far abroad in his quest.
There exist, as we are all thoroughly aware, abundant lives of artists, dictionaries of painters, and other prolific sources of information upon the practisers of the sober walks of pictorial art, with rich collections of engravings from their works, in fact, a complete library of delightful literature, which goes far towards proving that the world at least acknowledges a slight interest in individuals as well as works, and that people care to learn some particulars of the men who spent their industrious existences, and devoted the gifts of their admitted genius and application to the humanising walks of life, and to the fitting illustration of the world's universal passions and history, or to the delineation of the ever-varying beauties of nature under picturesque aspects.
Wealthy collectors, the cultivated patrons of material refinement, frequenters of picture galleries, those who love pictures by instinct, art amateurs, and the hopeful and fervent student, have alike a provision prepared for them in this regard, which happily leaves little to be desired. The memoirs of artists--men whose domestic and inner lives in so many instances teach lessons of gentleness, simplicity, and singleness of purpose, of perseverance under difficulties; making manifest to a world which is often slow to give them credit for the gifts that are in them, the strong impulses of talent under untoward conditions--are, for the most part, tender memorials, labours of love, cherished productions of biographers, whose own natural qualifications and trained appreciation of the subtler attractions of art have brought them into more intimate communion with the memorable subjects of their studies.