from his horse—Martin standing in the doorway still in his dressing gown—at seven o'clock in the morning. Martin was a defender of deism and natural religion, evolution (before Charles Darwin) and rationality. Georges Cuvier became an admirer of Martin's, and he increasingly enjoyed the company of scientists, artists and writers—Charles Dickens, Michael Faraday and J. M. W. Turner among them. Martin took a home near Turner in Chelsea, London. Martin began to experiment with mezzotint technology, and as a result was commissioned to produce 24 engravings for a new edition of Paradise Lost—perhaps the definitive illustrations of Milton's masterpiece, of which copies now fetch many hundreds of pounds. Politically his sympathies are not clear; some claim he was a radical, but this is not borne out by known facts, although he knew William Godwin, the ageing reformed revolutionist, husband of Mary Wollstonecraft and father of Mary Shelley; and John Hunt, co-founder of The Examiner. At one time the Martins took under their wing a young woman called Jane Webb, who at twenty produced The Mummy! a socially optimistic but satirical vision of a steam-driven world in the 22nd century. Another friend was Charles Wheatstone, professor of physics at King's College, London. Wheatstone experimented with telegraphy and invented the concertina and stereoscope; Martin was fascinated by his attempts to measure the speed of light. Accounts of Martin's evening parties reveal an astonishing array of thinkers, eccentrics and social movers; one witness was a young John Tenniel—later the illustrator of Lewis Carroll's work—who was heavily influenced by Martin and was a close friend of his children. At various points Martin's brothers were also among the guests, their eccentricities and conversation adding to the already exotic flavour of the fare. Paintings His first exhibited subject picture, Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion (now in the St. Louis Art Museum), was hung in the Ante-room of the Royal Academy in 1812, and sold for fifty guineas. The piece depicts a scene from the Tales of Two Genii" It was followed by the Expulsion (1813), Adam's First Sight of Eve (1813), Clytie (1814), Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still upon Gibeon (1816) and The Fall of Babylon (1819). In 1820 appeared his Belshazzar's Feast, which excited much favourable and hostile comment, and was awarded a prize of £200 at the British Institution, where the Joshua had previously carried off a premium of