the giddy madams of the courts of the Stuarts to stalk like Minervas or Junos, though they had naturally the dispositions of Venus or Danaë; and Reynolds, who had equal loveliness and infinitely more purity to portray, indulged his beauties with the same kind of deification. In truth, it is only worthy of a smile.

The portraits of Reynolds are equally numerous and excellent, and all who have written of their merits have swelled their eulogiums by comparing them with the simplicity of Titian, the vigour of Rembrandt, and the elegance and delicacy of Vandyke. Certainly, in character and expression, and in manly ease, he has never been surpassed. He is always equal-always natural-graceful-unaffected. His boldness of posture and his singular freedom of colouring are so supported by all the grace of art→by all the sorcery of skill-that they appear natural and noble. Over the meanest head he sheds the halo of dignity; his men are all nobleness, his women all loveliness, and his children all simplicity yet they are all like the living originals. He had the singular art of summoning the mind into the face, and making sentiment mingle in the portrait. He could completely dismiss all his preconceived notions of academic beauty from his mind, be dead to the past and living only to the present, and enter into the character of the reigning beauty of the hour with a truth and a happiness next to magical. It is not to be denied that he was a mighty flatterer. Had Colonel Charteris sat to Reynolds, he would, I doubt not, have given an aspect worthy of a President of the Society for the Suppression of Vice.

That the admirers of portrait-painting are many the annual exhibitions show us; and it is pleasant to read the social and domestic affections of the country in these innumerable productions. In the minds of some they rank with historical composi

tions; and there can be no doubt that portraits which give the form and the soul of poets and statesmen and warriors, and of all whose actions or whose thoughts lend lustre to the land, are to be received as illustrations of history. But with the mob of portraits fame and history have nothing to do. The painter who wishes for lasting fame must not lavish his fine colours and his choice postures on the rich and the titled alone; he must seek to associate his labours with the genius of his country. The face of an undistinguished person, however exquisitely painted, is disregarded in the eyes of posterity. The most skilful posture and the richest colouring cannot create the reputation which accompanies genius, and we turn coldly away from the head which we happen not to know or to have heard of. The portrait of Johnson has risen to the value of five hundred guineas: while the heads of many of Sir Joshua's grandest lords remain at their original fifty.

The influence of Reynolds on the taste and elegance of the island was great, and will be lasting. The grace and ease of his compositions were a lesson for the living to study, while the simplicity of his dresses admonished the giddy and the gay against the hideousness of fashion. He sought to restore nature in the looks of his sitters, and he waged a thirty years' war against the fopperies of dress. His works diffused a love of elegance, and united with poetry in softening the asperities of nature, in extending our views, and in connecting us with the spirits of the time. His cold stateliness of character, and his honourable pride of art, gave dignity to his profession: the rich and the far-descended were pleased to be painted by a gentleman as well as a genius.

Of historical and poetic subjects he painted upwards of one hundred and thirty. They are chiefly in England, and in the galleries or chambers of the

titled and the opulent. The names of a few of the most famous may interest the reader :-Macbeth and the Witches; Cardinal Beaufort; Holy Family; Hercules strangling the Serpents; the Nativity; Count Ugolino; Cymon and Iphigenia; the Fortune-Teller; Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy; the Snake in the Grass; the Blackguard Mercury; Muscipula; Puck; Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse; the Shepherd-Boy; Venus chiding Cupid for casting accounts.

Of men he painted the portraits of some four-andtwenty whose names still occupy their station in fame or history; and of ladies he painted many remarkable for accomplishments, mental and personal. Among the former, are Percy, Bishop of Dromore; Edmund Burke; Colonel Tarleton; Dr. Charles Burney; Dr. Hawkesworth; Dr. Robertson; Joseph Warton; Earl of Mansfield; Edward Gibbon; Oliver Goldsmith; Samuel Johnson; Warren Hastings; Lord Anson; Lord Heathfield; Lord Ligonier; Lord Rodney; Lord Thurlow; Lord Granby; Thomas Warton; Adam Ferguson; Sir Joseph Banks; Sir William Chambers; Laurence Sterne; Dr. Beattie ; Viscount Keppel; Horace Walpole; and Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Let me conclude with the words of Burke: they are a little loftier than necessary, and somewhat warmer; but much less cannot be said when a colder tale comes to be told.

"Sir Joshua Reynolds was, on many accounts, one of the most memorable men of his time. He was the first Englishman who added the praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his country. In taste-in grace-in facility-in happy inventionand in the richness and harmony of colouring, he was equal to the greatest masters of the renowned ages. In portrait he went beyond them; for he communicated to that description of the art, in which English artists are most engaged, a variety, a fancy, and a dignity, derived from the higher branches,

which even those who professed them in a superior manner did not always preserve when they delineated individual nature. His portraits remind the spectator of the invention and the amenity of landscape. In painting portraits he appeared not to be raised upon that platform, but to descend upon it from a higher sphere.

"In full affluence of foreign and domestic fame, admired by the expert in art and by the learned in science, courted by the great, caressed by sovereign powers, and celebrated by distinguished poets, his native humility, modesty, and candour never forsook him, even on surprise or provocation: nor was the least degree of arrogance or assumption visible to the most scrutinizing eye in any part of his conduct or discourse.

"His talents of every kind, powerful by nature and not meanly cultivated by letters--his social virtues in all the relations and all the habitudes of life, rendered him the centre of a very great and unparalleled variety of agreeable societies, which will be dissipated by his death. He had too much merit not to excite some jealousy-too much innocence to provoke any enmity. The loss of no man of his time can be felt with more sincere, general, and unmixed sorrow. Hail! and Farewell."

THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH.

Two eminent men, Wilson and Gainsborough, laid the foundation of our school of landscape; their works are full of the truest nature and the purest fancy, and their fame is now properly felt; yet of their personal history little is known save what the suspicious testimony of avowed enemies and careless friends-and the random notice of some periodical writers-may add to the vague stream of tradition.

Thomas Gainsborough, the fourth eminent name in British art, was born in the year 1727, at Sudbury in Suffolk-the day or the month no one has mentioned. Of his father, whose name was John, by trade a clothier, and in religion a dissenter, I can only say with common belief that he was a stately and personable man, with something mysterious in his history, for the pastoral and timid rustics of Suffolk suspected him of carrying à dagger and pistols under his clothes. Of his mother, whose maiden name I have not learned, the same authority says that she was kind and indulgent to her children, and, moreover, somewhat proud of her sons, of whom she had three, all distinguished above their companions for talents and attainments. The family was of old standing, well to live, and of unblemished respectability.

Respecting Thomas, the youngest son, memory is still strong in Suffolk. A beautiful wood of four miles' extent is shown, whose ancient trees, winding glades, and sunny nooks inspired him, while he was