Page:Chats on old prints (IA chatsonoldprints00haydiala).pdf/257

 of the same subject sells for £5, and there is little to chose between the two interpretations, though Von Müller's may be had for half that sum. The prices of Wille are fairly high, but in comparison with the prices paid for proofs by Raphael Morghen, they are ridiculously cheap. His Death of Cleopatra may sometimes be had for £5 in this country. La Tricoteuse after Mieris, unless a specially fine proof, may be found for 15s. or a sovereign. L'Instruction Paternelle after Terburg, in proof state before all letters, has sold for £20, but less than a quarter of that sum may buy it as a bargain, and a very fair print of it can be secured for less than a sovereign.

The eighteenth century in England was crowded with activity from the days of Anne and Marlborough's victories down to Nelson's time and the Nile. The South Sea Bubble, Jacobite conspiracies rife in high places, a bishop has to be banished, war with France and Spain, rebellion in Scotland and an invading army with the Pretender at their head advancing to Derby, the Indian Empire founded, Canada wrested from the French, the American Colonies declare their independence, war with Holland, and Cape Colony and the Dutch Indies added to our possessions—this is catalogue enough of stirring events in ten decades to stifle all the peaceful arts, but in literature there were as great giants as in the world of action. The age of Pope and Johnson and Goldsmith, and Addison and Swift, Defoe, and Sheridan and Fielding, was the age of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Gainsborough, Romney, Hogarth, Richard Wilson, and the caricaturists