Rowlandson appears both to have enjoyed this excursion, and to have been able to turn his opportunities to good account. He made several characteristic landscape sketches, and the present writer possesses a few drawings, in various stages of progress, which were evidently commenced on the spot.

A more Rowlandsonian relic of the tour is preserved in the plate, An Artist Travelling in Wales, first published soon after the traveller's return to town. Who the artist so represented may be the writer is not prepared to assert; but, as caricaturists have a well-recognised habit of turning not only the figures of their friends, but their own persons, to satiric usages on occasions, it is suggested that the large and gaunt limner, with his strongly-outlined features, and with his long legs slung across a Welch pony, may offer some points of resemblance to the designer; it is evident that more than once (See The Chamber of Genius, April 2, 1812) Rowlandson has burlesqued his own figure, or made himself the hero of equivocal situations, much as artists who have lived in our times have, now and again, delighted to introduce their own features amidst the fictitious personages they have thought proper or have been called upon to introduce. Notably in the cases of Thackeray and Cruickshank, this whimsical penchant is of such frequent occurrence, that the student, curious in tracing out such eccentricities of genius, will be able to discover at least a dozen characteristic and intentional resemblances of those admirable masters scattered over their illustrations, and relating to various periods of their careers.

It may be that remembrances of his old master at the Academy, Richard Wilson, who held the office of Librarian when the waggish youth, Rowlandson, was a student at the Academy, floated through the artist's mind in the course of his Welsh peregrinations, and tempted him to combine points of personality peculiar to both. It was not the first time Rowley's pencil had taken liberties with the marked traits of 'Red-nosed Dick,' who died, it must be conceded, some fifteen years before the tour in question. At all events, Peter Pindar, the witty and vituperative, was one of Rowlandson's intimates, and his advice to landscape-painters in general and to his friend and chum, Richard Wilson, in particular, whose talents he had the daring to lavishly acknowledge in the face of a generation which treated the artist with cold neglect because, forsooth, his works were 'not fashionable,' should appropriately be engraved below Rowlandson's unflattering presentation:—

Claude painted in the open air. Therefore to Wales at once repair, Where scenes of true magnificence you'll find; Besides this great advantage—if in debt, You'll have with creditors no tête-à-tête; So leave the bull-dog bailiffs all behind, Who hunt you with what noise they may, Must hunt for needles in a stack of hay.

A view in Wales is faithfully pictured; the unsophisticated natives are struck with astonishment at the figure of the travelling artist, whose profession they are far from comprehending, and whose paraphernalia excite their wonder. Rain, which is not unknown in the Principality, is wrapping landscape and figures in a moist embrace. The artist's very remarkable umbrella is a poor protection; his hat is limp; for safety his long clay pipe, a luxury difficult to replace, is thrust through a slit in the flap; his lank locks are dripping; the moisture is concentrating, and dropping down his well-defined proboscis. Of course it was necessary, in such an expedition, to bear the baggage and incidental impedimenta. A box contains the artist's larder and wardrobe; his saddle-bags hold the provisions of the hour; beside him swing his tea-kettle and coffee-pot; his goodly sketch-book is slung across his back, much as the observant traveller may have seen canvasses strapped across the shoulders of pedestrian artists during the season, and in the vicinity of Bettews, Conway and the Lluwy in our day. The easel is folded up—and a vastly unwieldy affair it is—on the back of the stumpy pony; brushes, a palette, knife, flasks of oil of goodly proportions, and a palette of extensive dimensions, are attached to the animal's neck; and thus equipped, the man of paint and his rough steed are picking a devious way through the saturating moisture, up and down the steep mountains of the country: a pleasant souvenir of past hardships and discomforts by the way.

February 18, 1799. Nautical Characters.

AN IRISH HOWL.