mention of Romney and his picture of 'Contemplation,' which work, the poet says in a note, 'the few who attended the unfashionable exhibition in Spring Gardens may possibly recollect.' Already the success of the Royal Academy was telling disastrously upon the 'Society of Artists of Great Britain' to which Romney had attached himself. In 1773, our painter, in his thirty-ninth year, and in receipt of an income of some twelve hundred pounds, derived solely from his profession, set sail for Italy, bearing with him letters of introduction from the Dukes of Gloucester and Richmond to the Pope, and accompanied by his close friend, Humphrey, the miniature-painter. His Holiness gave gracious permission to the artist to erect scaffolds in the Vatican, the better to make copies of the Raphaels which decorate the palace. Among the pictures executed during Romney's Italian tour was a portrait of the eccentric Wortley Montagu (Lady Mary's son), who had assumed the manners and attire of a Turk, and who, shortly after his sitting to the painter, died from a bone sticking in his throat. Another work which he brought back with him to England was a daring attempt to represent 'Providence brooding over chaos.' In later years, when Lord George Gordon and his mob were sacking the Roman Catholic chapels throughout London, and plundering the houses of all suspected of sympathy with the Latin Church, Romney became alarmed lest his picture should attract the attention of the rioters, and, regarded by them as an evidence of idolatrous devotion, lead to the destruction of his house and property. The canvas was at once removed out of sight. At the sale of his works, on the death of the painter, his son changed the name of the picture to 'Jupiter Pluvius,' under which more marketable guise it soon found a purchaser.