pictures of the Queen, of the various members of her family and of the pets of the royal household. In 1850 he was knighted and was at the very height of his popularity and success.

With the single exception of Sir Joshua Reynolds, he visited and received in his own house more distinguished persons than any other British artist. He was the intimate friend of Dickens, Chantrey, Sidney Smith, and other famous men.

Landseer had an extreme fondness for studying and making pictures of lions, and from the time when, as a boy, he dissected one, he tried to obtain the body of every lion that died in London. Dickens was in the habit of relating that on one occasion, when he and others were dining with the artist, a servant entered and asked, "Did you order a lion, sir?" as if it was the most natural thing in the world. The guests feared that a living lion was about to enter, but it turned out to be the body of the dead "Nero," of the Zoölogical Gardens, which had been sent as a gift to Sir Edwin.

His skill in drawing was marvelous, and was once shown in a rare way at a large evening party. Facility in drawing had been the theme of conversation, when a lady declared that no one had yet drawn two objects at the same moment. Landseer would not allow that this could not be done, and immediately took two pencils and drew a horse's head with one hand and at the same time, a stag's head with the other hand. He painted with great rapidity; he once sent to the exhibition a picture of rabbits painted in three-quarters of an hour. Mr. Wells relates that at one time when Landseer was visiting him, he left the house for church just as his butler placed a fresh canvas on the easel before the painter; on his return, three hours later, Landseer had completed a life-sized picture of a fallow-deer, and so well was it done that neither he nor the artist could see that it required retouching.

Several portraits of Landseer exist and are well known, but that called the "Connoisseurs," painted in 1865 for the Prince of Wales, is of great interest. Here the artist has painted a half-length portrait of himself engaged in drawing, while two dogs look over his shoulders with a critical expression.

In 1840, Landseer made a quite extended tour in Europe, and that was the only time that he was long absent from Great Britain. In 1853, several of his works were sent to the Exposition in Paris; he was the only English artist who received the great gold medal.

Sir Edwin Landseer was also a sculptor, and though he executed but few works in this art, the colossal lions at the base of Nelson's Monument in Trafalgar Square, London, are a triumph for him. He was chosen for this work on account of his great knowledge of the "king of beasts."

At his death he had modeled but one; the others were copied from it under the care of the Baron Marochetti.

Sir Edwin continued to work in spite of sadness, failing health and sight, and in the last year of his life he executed four pictures, one being an equestrian portrait of the Queen.

He died October 1, 1873, and was buried with many honors in St. Paul's Cathedral. He left a property of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds; the pictures and drawings in his studio were sold for seventy thousand pounds, and all this large sum, with the exception of a few small bequests, was given to his brother Thomas and his three sisters, ten thousand pounds being given to his brother Charles.

I suppose that many of the pictures of Sir Edwin Landseer are well known to the readers of St. Nicholas. "High Life" and "Low Life," "A Highland Breakfast," "Dignity and Impudence," the "Cat's Paw," "The Monarch of the Glen," the "Piper and Nutcrackers," and others, are familiar in the form of prints to many people in many lands, and they are pictures which all must love. It is needless to add any long opinion of the artistic qualities of this master; the critic Hamerton has happily summed up an estimate of him in these words: "Everything that can be said about Landseer's knowledge of animals, and especially of dogs, has already been said. There was never very much to say, for there was no variety of opinions, and nothing to discuss. Critics may write volumes of controversy about Turner and Delacroix, but Landseer's merits are so obvious to every one that he stood in no need of critical explanations. The best commentators on Landseer, the best defenders of his genius, are the dogs themselves; and so long as there exist terriers, deer-hounds, and blood-hounds, his fame will need little assistance from writers upon art."