It is strange that he attributes slovenliness of manner to Rembrandt, "from Avarice." Documents have recently been produced showing that Rembrandt's goods were seized for payment of no very large debt. But is not M. de Burtin altogether mistaken in this manner of Rembrandt? Any of his pictures that show this slovenliness, are, we should suspect, in those parts merely sketched in--a method agreeable to his practice, which was to work upon and upon, glazing, and heaping colour--a method which required, in the first instance, a loose and undefined sketchy manner. Some few years ago there was a picture by him exhibited at the Institution, Pall-Mall--dead game, wonderfully painted, and evidently unfinished; a boy in the background was, as we might term it, daubed in in a very slovenly manner, and with a greenish colour, evidently for the sake of that colour as an underground. Under the head "Historical" in this chapter, it is strange to find but seven names, Rubens, Vandyke, Rembrandt, Lairesse, Poelemburg, Albert Durer, and Hans Holbein. Even with some of these names it is too much honour to place Lairesse and Poelemburg. In reference to the lower classes of subjects, we think justice is hardly done to Jan Steen, of whom, considering him even as a colourist, more should have been said, than that he "is distinguished by the drollery of his subjects, and by the most true and ingeniously simple expression of the feelings of common life." All this might be said of many others; the characteristic of Jan Steen is still wanting. So we think as to Philip Wouverman; no notice is taken of his too great softness, the evident fault of his manner. Nor are we satisfied with the description of Backhuysen. It should have been noticed in what he is distinguished from Vandervelde. His defect in composition is so striking, as frequently to show a want of perspective in design, and often he has no principal object in his picture. His vessels are either too large or too small for the scene; and his execution was likewise too softened. He winds up this part of the subject with a quotation from Diderot, that "he cannot be manner'd, either in design or colouring, who imitates nature scrupulously, and that mannerism comes of the master of the academy, of the school, and of the Antique," which we very much doubt, for the mannerism is often in the mind, the peculiar, the autographic character of the painter, which he stamps even upon nature. Were a Wynantz, and a Claude or Poussin, put down before the same scene, how different would be their pictures, how different the vision in the eye of the three! A Claude would see the distances, a Gaspar Poussin the middle distances and flowing lines, and Wynantz the docks and thistles. The chapter "on the signatures of the Masters," will be found useful to collectors. He says that where there is a false signature it is removed by spirits of wine, and that is the proof that it is false. He does not draw the inference, that as