GRATIAN.—No, no, my good friend, don’t make excuse, it would be our shame were it needed. You have given us one subject for a picture, whose interest should set my brushes in motion were I twenty years younger, and might hope to succeed. But this I will say, my memory has a picture gallery of her own, and in it will this little piece have a good place. Now, I like this conversation on art, because you know I have been all my life a dauber of canvass—dauber! even Aquilius, who has so much addicted himself to the art, has praised some of my performances. I have painted many a sign for good-natured landlords, in odd places, where my fishing excursions have led me; and old Hill, honest old Hill, the fisher of Millslade, has a bit of canvass of mine, the remembrance of a day, which I believe he will treasure a little for my sake, and more for its truth, to his last day. I must show the Curate’s wife old Hill. I hit him off well,—am proud of that portrait, and often look at my old companion from my easy chair. I sometimes now dabble with my tube colours, and make a dash at my remembrances of river scenes. Nature and I have been familiar many a long year. I love the breezy hill, and the free large moor, that takes up the winds and tosses them down the grooved sides, to go off in their own communing with the waterfalls. I love, too, the quiet brook, and rivers stealing their way by green meadows, and the elms, that stand like outposts on the banks, keepers of the river. Have we not, in our discussion, too much omitted to speak of landscape,—even including the sea-shores? And in landscape we certainly have painters that please. As a true fisherman and painter-naturalist I could not resist, the other day, purchasing Lewis’s river scenes. How happily—the more happily because his execution is so unstudied, so accidental—does Lewis, with his etching and mezzotint effects, put you into the very heart of river scenery; and then how truly do you trace it upwards and downwards. We have some good landscape painters.