"ALTIUS IBUNT QUI AD SUMMA." 291 



be, and his spirited pencil well described the thing as 

 it ought to be. Old Seymour might, and I believe 

 could, have made a better picture as a picture : but 

 he could no more have represented a hunter going as 

 Alken could, than I could describe a run like Beckford 

 (and that is saying a good deal). If I am rightly in- 

 formed, Alken could "ride a bit;" if so, this accounts 

 for all. 



About the time when Ben Marshall as a painter 

 and Henry Alken as a sketcher were at their best, 

 Mr. Ward was, though a much older man, in the 

 zenith of his career. To attempt to compare Marshall 

 as a painter with Ward would be to compare Peter 

 Pindar with Shakspeare, or Captain Morris with Lord 

 Byron. Still, so far as making a characteristic portrait 

 of a Leicestershire hunter goes, Marshall would have 

 "beat the crack in a common canter." Ward was no 

 sportsman : he could not confine his energetic pencil 

 to represent a mere quiet looking, but finely formed, 

 animal. Ward wanted fire, vigour, the distended 

 nostril, the flowing mane, and the fiery eye of the 

 war-horse. Old Vivian, with his ragged points 

 and more ragged tail, would to this enthusiastic 

 painter have been a subject beneath his pencil. He 

 could no more appreciate the form of a hunter than I 

 could the beauty of a felucca. Give Ward the horses 

 of the sun to represent, he was at home. The lion 

 roused from his den would call all the truly masterly 

 efforts of his pencil and all the wondrous and glowing 

 tints of his palate into requisition ; and in a most 

 masterly manner would such subjects be pourtrayed ; 

 but that he would estimate a perhaps plain and 

 sneaking looking horse (though worth three hundred 



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