It is strange that Sir Joshua should have characterised Hogarth as having given his attention to "the Ridicule of Life." We could never see any thing ridiculous in his deep tragedies. Gainsborough is praised in that he never introduced "mythological learning" into his pictures. "Our late ingenious academician, Wilson, has, I fear, been guilty, like many of his predecessors, of introducing gods and goddesses, ideal beings, into scenes which were by no means prepared to receive such personages. His landscapes were in reality too near common nature to admit supernatural objects. In consequence of this mistake, in a very admirable picture of a storm, which I have seen of his hand, many figures are introduced in the foreground, some in apparent distress, and some struck dead, as a spectator would naturally suppose, by lightning: had not the painter injudiciously, (as I think,) rather chosen that their death should be imputed to a little Apollo, who appears in the sky with his bent bow, and that those figures should be considered as the children of Niobe." This is the passage that gave so much offence; foolish admirers will fly into flame at the slightest spark--the question should have been, is the criticism just, not whether Sir Joshua had been guilty of the same error--but we like critics, the only true critics, who give their reason: and so did Sir Joshua. "To manage a subject of this kind a peculiar style of art is required; and it can only be done without impropriety, or even without ridicule, when we adopt the character of the landscape, and that too in all its parts, to the historical or poetical representation. This is a very difficult adventure, and requires a mind thrown back two thousand years, like that of Nicolo Poussin, to achieve it. In the picture alluded to, the first idea that presents itself is that of wonder, at seeing a figure in so uncommon a situation as that in which Apollo is placed: for the clouds on which he kneels have not the appearance of being able to support him--they have neither the substance nor the form fit for the receptacle of a human figure, and they do not possess, in any respect, that romantic character which is appropriated to such an object, and which alone can harmonize with poetical stories." We presume Reynolds alludes to the best of the two Niobes by Wilson--that in the National Gallery. The other is villanously faulty as a composition, where loaf is piled upon loaf for rock and castle, and the tree is common and hedge-grown, for the purpose of making gates; but the other would have been a fine picture, not of the historical class--the parts are all common, the little blown about underwood is totally deficient in all form and character--rocks and trees, and they do not, as in a former discourse--Reynolds had laid down that they should--sympathize with the subject; then, as to the substance of the cloud, he is right--it is not voluminous, it is mere vapour. In the received adoption of clouds as