of the Louvre, Blenheim, and Castle Howard, as "the fairest ornaments." He finishes this admirable discourse with the following eloquent passage:--"It is allowed on all hands, that facts and events, however they may bind the historian, have no dominion over the poet or the painter. With us history is made to bend and conform to this great idea of art. And why? Because these arts, in their highest province, are not addressed to the gross senses; but to the desires of the mind, to that spark of divinity which we have within, impatient of being circumscribed and pent up by the world which is about us. Just so much as our art has of this, just so much of dignity, I had almost said of divinity, it exhibits; and those of our artists who possessed this mark of distinction in the highest degree, acquired from thence the glorious appellation of divine. [11] The reader will remember the supposed epitaph, "Lie heavy on him, earth, for he Laid many a heavy load on thee." Mr Burnet's notes to this Discourse are not important to art. There is an amusing one on acting, that discusses the question of naturalness on the stage, and with some pleasant anecdotes. * * * * * The FOURTEENTH DISCOURSE is chiefly occupied with the character of Gainsborough, and landscape painting. It has brought about him, and his name, a hornet's nest of critics, in consequence of some remarks upon a picture of Wilson's. Gainsborough and Sir Joshua, and perhaps in some degree Wilson, had been rivals. It has been said that Wilson and Gainsborough never liked each other. It is a well-known anecdote that Sir Joshua, at a dinner, gave the health of Gainsborough, adding "the greatest landscape painter of the age," to which Wilson, at whom the words were supposed to be aimed, dryly added, "and the greatest portrait painter too." We can, especially under circumstances, for there had been a coolness between the President and Gainsborough, pardon the too favourable view taken of Gainsborough's landscape pictures. He was unquestionably much greater as a portrait painter. The following account of the interview with Gainsborough upon his death-bed, is touching, and speaks well of both:--"A few days before he died he wrote me a letter, to express his acknowledgments for the good opinion I entertained of his abilities, and the manner in which (he had been informed) I always spoke of him; and desired that he might see me once before he died. I am aware how flattering it is to myself to be thus connected with the dying testimony which this excellent painter bore to his art. But I cannot prevail upon myself to suppress that I was not connected with him by any habits of familiarity. If any little jealousies had subsisted between us, they were forgotten in these moments of sincerity; and he turned towards me as one who was engrossed by the same pursuits, and who deserved his good opinion by being sensible of his excellence. Without