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.

    [4] Of this house, we have given an accurate Engraving at page 8
        in the present volume.

The proposition being made to the host, he agreed to wipe out Hogarth’s score upon his completing the picture, which attracted much company; so that, although the house lost the dinner party, it gained by persons coming to see the parochial authorities stuck up on the walls.  Some time after, the score again raised its head, when mine host, for the purpose of clearing it off, and to make the tap-room more uniform, proposed to Hogarth the subject of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s porters going to dinner; they at that time, as they still do, frequenting the house.  This picture represents Fenchurch-street as it appeared more than a century ago, with the old Magpie and Punch Bowl public-house in the distance, which house has not long since been taken down.  The Elephant public-house was taken down and rebuilt in 1826, and is now occupied by Mrs. Eaton, in whose family the business has been for more than a hundred years, and from whom these particulars have been obtained.  The first named picture is considered to be the original from which Hogarth afterwards painted the one known as the “Modern Midnight Conversation,” in which there are one or two figures less than in the original.  Orator Henley and the other principal characters, occupy the same situation in both performances.

Mr. Soane, the architect, upon hearing of the present condition of the pictures, said, that he in early life, while at Rome, knew that various attempts had been made for the purpose of removing oil paintings from walls, but without success, and expressed himself highly gratified at the result of the exertions of the persons who bought and removed them at no small risk and expense, viz.  Mr. Lyon, 5, Apollo-buildings, East-street, Walworth, and Mr. H.E.  Hall, a Leicestershire gentleman of great ingenuity; who have placed them for sale in the gallery of Mr. Penny, in Pall Mall.