What dire disasters mark'd the close of day,
'Twere tedious, tiresome, endless to obtrude:
Imagination must the scene conclude."—E.
EVENING.
It is not easy to imagine fatigue better delineated than in the appearance of this amiable pair. In a few of the earliest impressions, Mr. Hogarth printed the hands of the man in blue, to show that he was a dyer, and the face and neck of the woman in red, to intimate her extreme heat.[140] The lady's aspect lets us at once into her character; we are certain that she was born to command. As to her husband, "God made him, and he must pass for a man;" what his wife has made him is indicated by the cow's horns, which are so placed as to become his own. The hope of the family, with a cockade in his hat, and riding upon papa's cane, seems much dissatisfied with female sway. A face with more of the shrew in embryo than that of the girl, it is scarcely possible to conceive. Upon such a character, the most casual observer pronounces with the decision of a Lavater.
Nothing can be better imagined than the group in the alehouse. They have taken a refreshing walk into the country, and, being determined to have a cooling pipe, seat themselves in a chair-lumbered closet with a low ceiling; where every man pulling off his wig, and throwing a pocket-handkerchief over his head, inhales the fume of hot punch, the smoke of half a dozen pipes, and the dust from the road. If this is not rural felicity, what is? The old gentleman in a black bag-wig, and the two women near him, sensibly enough, take their seats in the open air.
From a woman milking a cow, we conjecture the hour to be about five in the afternoon; and from the same circumstance, I am inclined to think this agreeable party are going to their pastoral bower rather than returning from it.
The cow and dog appear as much inconvenienced by heat as any of the party: the former is whisking off the flies; and the latter creeps unwillingly along, and casts a longing look at the crystal river in which he sees his own shadow. A remarkably hot summer is intimated by the luxuriant state of a vine creeping over an alehouse window. On the side of the New River, where the scene is laid, lies one of the wooden pipes employed in the waterworks. Opposite Sadler's Wells there still remains a sign[141] of Sir Hugh Middleton's head, which is here represented.