At the end of the volume are extracts from the notes of Sir Joshua Reynolds. They are extremely interesting, both from their examples of success, and warnings by failure. We cannot help reflecting, on reading these notes, upon the great importance of such a work as Mr Eastlake's. Had Sir Joshua Reynolds been in possession of such a volume, how many of his pictures, now perished and perishing, would have been preserved for immortality! and how much better might even the best have been by the certainty of means which would have been within his reach! and we should not have had to regret, as we often do in looking at some of his best pictures, that somewhat heavy labouring after a brilliancy and a power not always compatible, and perhaps not then attainable, which shows that his mind was thoroughly imbued with a full sense of the excellency of the great masters, but that he wanted such a work as the learning, the research, and discriminating judgment of Mr Eastlake now offers for the study and practice of every professor of the art. To these notes are added some interesting remarks by our author upon the effects of the recipes with which the pictures were painted, as they are now visible in the works themselves. This book could not have appeared at a more fit time. The English school is becoming of too great importance to waste any of its powers any longer in the perishing and weak materials of our various meguilps; and the German school may be arrested by it in their backward progress to the old, quaint, dry method which the old masters themselves quitted as soon as the improvements of the Van Eycks, and the modifications of those improvements by their successors, established upon a basis for immortality painting in oil. We must forbear, lest our readers may be wearied with the name of varnish, and may think we resemble that unfortunate painter, who, bewildering his wits upon the subject, became deranged, and varnished his clothes with turpentine varnish, and went in this state shining through the streets. LE PREMIER PAS.