Note (return) — Fine Arts.

An interesting discovery of paintings by Hogarth, viz. "The Modern Midnight Conversation," and the "Hudson's Bay Company's Porters going to Dinner," was made about three years' ago, upon the demolition of the old Elephant public-house, Fenchurch-street.4 The pictures were the undoubted productions of Hogarth, something more than one hundred years since, at which time he lodged there. The house was known as the Elephant and Castle, where it had been customary for the parochial authorities to have an entertainment, the celebration of which, from some cause, was unexpectedly removed to Harry the Eighth's head, opposite, and still in the same line of business. This removal being mentioned to our artist on his return home at night, irritated him not a little, at what he considered the neglect with which he had been treated in not being invited as formerly. He therefore went over to the King's Head, where some discussion took place, which it is supposed was not very amicable, as he left them (as the clock indicates, at past four in the morning,) threatening to stick them all up on the walls of the tap-room in the Elephant and Castle, which, as an eminent modern artist said, most emphatically, upon his first seeing the picture after it had been removed and placed on canvass,—Hogarth had done Con Amore.