supporting figures, they are, at least, pillowy, capacious, and round--here it is quite otherwise; and Sir Joshua might well call it a little Apollo, with that immense cloud above him, which is in fact too much a portrait of a cloud, too peculiar, too edgy, for any subject where the sky is not to be all in all. We do not say it is not fine and grand, and what you please; but it is not subordinate, it casts its lightning as from its own natural power, there was no need of a god's assistance. "Nec Deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus;" and the action does not take place in a "prepared" landscape. There is nothing to take us back to a fabled age. Reynolds is not unjust to Wilson's merits, for he calls it, notwithstanding this defect, "a very admirable picture;" which picture will, we suspect, in a few years lose its principal charm, if it has not lost it; the colour is sadly changing, there is now little aerial in the sky. It is said of Wilson, that he ridiculed the experiments of Sir Joshua, and spoke of using nothing but "honest linseed"--to which, however, he added varnishes and wax, as will easily be seen in those pictures of his which have so cracked--and now lose their colour. "Honest" linseed appears to have played him a sad trick, or he to have played a trick upon honest linseed. Sir Joshua, however, to his just criticism, adds the best precept, example--and instances two pictures, historical landscape, "Jacob's Dream"--which was exhibited a year or two ago in the Institution, Pall-Mall--by Salvator Rosa, and the picture by Sebastian Bourdon, "The Return of the Ark from Captivity," now in the National Gallery. The latter picture, as a composition, is not perhaps good--it is cut up into too many parts, and those parts are not sufficiently poetical; in its hue, it may be appropriate. The other, "Jacob's Dream" is one of the finest by the master--there is an extraordinary boldness in the clouds, an uncommon grandeur, strongly marked, sentient of angelic visitants. This picture has been recently wretchedly engraved in mezzotinto; all that is in the picture firm and hard, is in the print soft, fuzzy, and disagreeable. Sir Joshua treats very tenderly the mistaken manner of Gainsborough in his late pictures, the "odd scratches and marks." "This chaos, this uncouth and shapeless appearance, by a kind of magic at a certain distance, assumes form, and all their parts seem to drop into their places, so that we can hardly refuse acknowledging the full effect of diligence, under the appearance of chance and heavy negligence." The _heavy_ negligence happily describes the fault of the manner. It is horribly manifest in that magnitude of vulgarity for landscape, the "Market Cart" in our National Gallery, and purchased at we know not what vast sum, and presented by the governors of the institution to the nation. We have a very high opinion of the genius of Gainsborough; but we do not see it in his landscapes, with very few exceptions.