And therefore proper at a sheriff's feast."
Besides a portrait of William III. and a judge, the hall is ornamented with a full length of that illustrious hero Sir William Walworth; in commemoration of whose valour, the weapon with which he slew Wat Tyler was introduced into the city arms.
PLATE IX.
THE IDLE 'PRENTICE BETRAYED BY A PROSTITUTE, AND TAKEN IN A NIGHT-CELLAR WITH HIS ACCOMPLICE.
"The adulteress will hunt for the precious life."—Proverbs vi. 26.
INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS, PLATE IX.
From a picture of the reward of diligence, we return to the consequence of sloth. The idle and incorrigible outcast, mature in vice, and lost to society, is here represented in a night-cellar.[164] In this dreary and horrid cavern of vice and infamy he is dividing the spoil produced by robbery with one of his wretched accomplices. The woman that seems his favourite, and in whose garret we saw him in the seventh plate, deliberately betrays him. The officers of justice are entering, and he is on the point of being seized. The corpse of a gentleman, who has been murdered, is with unfeeling indifference put down a cavity made in the floor for the purposes of concealment. To show that the grenadiers company were then, as now, a virtuous body of men, one of them, in a true Dutch attitude, is smoking in the corner. A scene of riot, likely to terminate in blood, passes in the background. The countenances of the combatants, and a noseless woman bringing the porter, are finely marked. A rope, hanging immediately over a fellow who is asleep, should not be overlooked. The watches, which are in a hat, exhibit another instance of Hogarth's peculiar accuracy; each of them is a little after ten. Some cards scattered on the floor show the amusements of this earthly Pandemonium.