of an Indian prospect, with palm and cocoa trees, some figures of _blacks_, and elephant's teeth. This figure also suits an admiral, or commander at sea, when a sea-fight is introduced instead of a landskip." Such a figure may, indeed, be more at home at sea, and such a one may have been that famous lady, whose captain so "very much applauded her," and "Made her the first lieutenant Of the gallant Thunder Bomb." Not a painter of the present day, it seems, knows how to paint the clergy. Mr Pickersgill has done quite common things, and simply shown the cloth and the band--that is poor device. See how Gerard would have it done. Every clergyman should be a Dr Beattie. "With a divine agrees the statue of truth, represented in a Christian-like manner, or else this same emblem in one of his hands, and his other on his breast, besides tapestries, bas-reliefs, or paintings, and some Christian emblems of the true faith; and representation of the Old and New Testament--in the offskip a temple." All the portraits of the great duke are defective, inasmuch as none of them have "Mars in a niche," or Victory sitting on a trophy, or a statue of Hercules. You probably have no idea what a great personage is a "sea-insurer." He is accompanied by Arion on a dolphin; and in a picture a sea-haven, with a ship under sail making towards it; on the shore the figure of Fortune, and (who are, think you, the "supercargoes?") over the cargo "Castor and Pollux." In this mode of portrait-painting it would be absolutely necessary to go back to the old plan of putting the names underneath the personages; and even then, though you write under such, this is Castor, this Pollux, and this the sea-insurer, it will ever puzzle the whole ship's crew to conjecture how they came there together. Gerard admits we cannot paint what we have not seen, and by example rather condemns his own recommendations. Fewer have seen Castor and Pollux, than have seen a lion, and he says men cannot paint what they have not seen. "As was the case of a certain Westphalian, who, representing Daniel in the lions' den, and having never seen a lion, he painted hogs instead of lions, and wrote underneath, 'These should be lions.'" By this time, Eusebius, you ought to know how to sit, if you have not made up your mind not to sit at all. You need not, however, be much alarmed about the emblems--modern masters cut all that matter short. They won't throw in any superfluous work, you may be sure of that, unless you should sit to Landseer, and he will paint your dog, and throw in your superfluous self for nothing. You would be like Mercury with the statuary, mortified to find his own image thrown into the bargain.