on the wall, a crayon of her brother, a bank president with a shaved upper lip, a high, pious forehead, and in his eyes a stern expression of percentage.  Over the dull white marble mantelpiece hung a huge mezzotint, of violent contrast in black and white, a picture whose subject had without doubt given it the place of honour in this old-fashioned, tasteless, homely, comfortable room.  It bore for a title The Fall of Nineveh, and it was designed and mezzotinted by John Martin.

Let us look at this picture.  It depicts the downfall of the great city upon which the wrath of God is visited.  There are ghastly gleams of lightning above the doomed vicinity.  A fierce tempest is in progress as the invading hosts break down the great waterways and enter dry-shod into the vast and immemorial temples and palaces.  The tragedy, the human quality of the design, is summed up by the agitated groups in the foreground; the king, surrounded by his harem, makes a gesture of despair; the women, with loose-flowing draperies, surround him like frightened swans.  A high priest raises his hand to the stormy heavens, upon which he is evidently invoking as stormy maledictions.  A warrior swings his blade; to his neck clings a fair helpless one, half nude.  There are other groups.  Men in armour rush to meet the foe in futile agitation.  On temple tops, on marble terraces and balconies, on the efflorescent capitals of vast columns that pierce the sky, swarms affrighted humanity.  The impression is grandiose and terrific.  Exotic architecture, ebon night, an event that has echoed down the dusty corridors of legend or history—­these and a hundred other details are enclosed within the frame of this composition.  Another picture which hangs hard by, the Destruction of Jerusalem, after Kaulbach, is colourless in comparison.  The Englishman had greater imagination than the German, though he lacked the latter’s anatomical science.  To-day in the Pinakothek, Munich, Kaulbach holds a place of honour.  You may search in vain at the London National Gallery for the paintings of a man who once was on the crest of popularity in England, whose Biblical subjects attracted multitudes, whose mezzotints and engravings were sold wherever the English Bible was read.  John Martin, painter, mezzotinter, man of gorgeous imagination, second to De Quincey or the author of Vathek, is to-day more forgotten than Beckford himself.

Heinrich Heine in his essay, The Romantic School, said that “the history of literature is a great morgue, wherein each seeks the dead who are near or dear to him.”  Into what morgue fell John Martin before his death?  How account for the violent changes in popular taste?  Martin suffered from too great early success.  The star of Turner was in the ascendant.  John Ruskin denied merit to the mezzotinter, and so it is to-day that if you go to our print-shops you will seldom find one of his big or little plates.  He has gone out of fashion—­fatal phrase!—­and only in the cabinets of old collectors can you get a peep at his archaic and astounding productions.  William Blake is in vogue; perhaps Martin—?  And then those who have garnered his plates will reap a harvest.