Part 5 (2/2)
The little , solitaire, laced hat, and ruffles, is eagerly inspecting a bill of fare, with the following articles _pour diner_; cocks' coues, rabbits'
ears, fricasee of snails, _grande d'oeufs buerre_
In the centre of the room is a capacious china jar; in one corner a tremendous pyramid, composed of packs of cards, and on the floor close to them, a bill, inscribed ”Lady Basto, D{r} to John Pip, for cards,--300”
The room is ornamented with several pictures; the principal represents the Medicean Venus, on a pedestal, in stays and high-heeled shoes, and holding before her a hoop petticoat, so down a fat lady to a thin proportion, and another Cupid blowing up a fire to burn a hoop petticoat, , &c On the dexter side is another picture, representing Monsieur Desnoyer, operatically habited, dancing in a grand ballet, and surrounded by butterflies, insects evidently of the saenus with this deity of dance On the sinister, is a drawing of exotics, consisting of queue and bag-wigs, muffs, solitaires, petticoats, French heeled shoes, and other fantastic fripperies
Beneath this is a lady in a pyra the Park; and as the co the streets
The fire-screen is adorned with a drawing of a lady in a sedan-chair--
”To conceive how she looks, you must call to your mind The lady you've seen in a lobster confined, Or a paGod in son froreat partiality for his own perforraved, the drawing from which the first print was copied, was made by the connivance of one of her servants Be that as it may, his ridicule on the absurdities of fashi+on,--on the folly of collecting old china,--cookery,--card playing, &c is pointed, and highly wrought
At the sale of Miss Edwards's effects at Kensington, the original picture was purchased by the father of Mr Birch, surgeon, of Essex-street, Strand
[Illustration: TASTE IN HIGH LIFE]
THE HARLOT'S PROGRESS
PLATE I
”The snares are set, the plot is laid, Ruin awaits thee,--hapless , foul desire_ is near; Baneful and blighting are their suardian angel sleeps, Vice clasps her hands, and virtue weeps”
The general aim of historical painters, says Mr Ireland, has been to euished character
To go through a series of actions, and conduct their hero froive a history upon canvass, and tell a story with the pencil, few of theenius, that one path to the Teuide, and gained the suave, not round-plan of the countenance, but marked the features with every iraphical dra those heroic h their day, with the destructive brilliancy of a comet, to their adulatory historians, he, like Lillo, has taken his scenes from humble life, and rendered them a source of entertainives the history of a Prostitute The story commences with her arrival in London, where, initiated in the school of profligacy, she experiences theof life Her variety of wretchedness, forms such a picture of the way in which vice rewards her votaries, as ought to warn the young and inexperienced fro this path of infaedy is laid at the Bell Inn, in Wood-street, and the heroine y the direction of a letter close to the York waggon, frohted In attire--neat, plain, unadorned; in demeanor--artless, uished by native innocence than elegant symmetry; her conscious blush, and downcast eyes, attract the attention of a female fiend, who panders to the vices of the opulent and libidinous Co out of the door of the inn, we discover twoon the devoted victi resemblance of Colonel Francis Chartres
The old procuress, ion, addresses her with the familiarity of a friend, rather than the reserve of one who is to be her mistress
Had her father been versed in even the first rudi with one of so decided an aspect: for this also is the portrait of a woood, easy rossed in the contemplation of a superscription to a letter, addressed to the bishop of the diocese So ihter, or regarding the devastation occasioned by his gaunt and hungry Rozinante having snatched at the straw that packs up some earthenware, and produced
”The wreck of flower-pots, and the crash of pans!”
From the inn she is taken to the house of the procuress, divested of her hoayest style of the day; and the tender native hue of her couised by patches She is then introduced to Colonel Chartres, and by artful flattery and liberal proreatness A short tiht a breath these promises were composed Deserted by her keeper, and terrified by threats of an immediate arrest for the po a short time protected by one of the tribe of Levi, she is reduced to the hard necessity of wandering the streets, for that precarious subsistence which flows froate debauchee Here her situation is truly pitiable! Chilled by nipping frost andbosohts of destructive poison This, added to the contagious company of women of her own description, vitiates her mind, eradicates the native seeds of virtue, destroys that elegant and fascinating siives additional charms to beauty, and leaves, in its place, art, affectation, and impudence
Neither the painter of a sublime picture, nor the writer of an heroic poem, should introduce any trivial circumstances that are likely to draw the attention froures Such coreat whole: minute detail will inevitably weaken their effect But in little stories, which record the domestic incidents of fa in themselves, acquire a consequence from their situation; they add to the interest, and realise the scene In this, as in alarth, we see a close regard paid to things as they then were; by which means his prints becoe
[Illustration: THE HARLOT'S PROGRESS