"A fortune-teller seated in his room receives a visit from Miss Farren (right) who sits facing him in profile to the left. She is fashionably dressed, wearing a high ribbon-trimmed hat, and a cloak bordered with fur; her hands are in a large muff. She says, "The woman at the Green Rails in Store Street gives me no hopes of a coronet, I wish to know your opinion, venerable Sage." The sage, seated in a high-backed arm-chair, a gouty leg supported on a stool, wearing a nightcap and fur-bordered robe, peers through spectacles at a book whose pages are covered with symbols. Beside him is a table on which are a telescope, celestial globe, ink-stand, compass, and hour-glass. From under the table-cloth a skull seems to peer up at the lady. The room is crowded with the wizard's stock-in-trade: an alligator hangs from the ceiling above a number of monstrosities in bottles; there is a diminutive skeleton and also another telescope and globe; there are books inscribed: 'Aspects of the Planets' and 'Astrol[ogy]'; papers inscribed: 'Table of the Orbs, and Planets'; 'the Twelve signs of the Zodiac'; 'Prediction of future Events'. Against the wall are a clock, a barometer and thermometer, an astronomical diagram, shelves containing folio volumes partly concealed by a curtain. On the ground behind the visitor is (?) a magic lantern."--British Museum online catalogue.
Description:
Publisher's advertisment below title: In Hollands exhibition rooms may be seen the largest collection in Europe of humorous prints, admittance one shilling. and Title etched below image.
Publisher:
W. Holland, No. 50 Oxford Street
Subject (Name):
Auchincloss, Hugh Dudley--Ownership., Farren, Elizabeth,--1762-1829--Caricatures and cartoons., Harvey, Francis--Ownership., and Holland, William, active 1782-1817, publisher.
