Romney's historical pictures are very numerous; though comparatively few of them can be considered as completely finished works. According to Allan Cunningham's estimate, for one really finished there are five half done, and for five half done there are at least a dozen merely sketched out on the canvas. The painter was all impulse; very eager and impatient at the beginning, but soon wearied, and only by painful efforts and extraordinary labour ever arriving at the conclusion of his undertakings. There was a want of concentrative power about him; he was ever frittering away his undeniable abilities upon a number of hastily adopted projects, crudely conceived, and remorselessly abandoned when the temperature of his enthusiasm lowered, or any unlooked-for difficulties appeared in his path. How the erratic and desultory nature of his mind was fostered and aggravated by Hayley's mischievous efforts has already been shown. That the glowing eulogium pronounced by Flaxman upon his friend's productions will be endorsed by modern critics is hardly to be expected. Indeed, the characteristics upon which Flaxman especially dwells as worthy of the highest praise will be rather accounted as defects in the present day. The severe imitation of the antique; the artificial simplicity of composition; the bare background; the bas-relief style of treatment; the pseudo-purity which rejected natural feeling and action in favour of a conventionally ideal expression--these were precious gifts in Flaxman's eyes; to modern artists they will appear rather errors of judgment pertaining to a past school of art: false fashions which the present generation of painters have happily outgrown and abandoned. At the same time, however, it should not be forgotten that the majority of Romney's works of this class will bear comparison with the best productions of his contemporaries, and that some of them evince in a remarkable degree his grace of manner, skill in expression, and loftiness of aim.