Domestic subject, or _genre_, painting in England may be said to have originated with Hogarth, but it made slow progress after his death till the commencement of the nineteenth century. Historic pictures of a large size were neither popular nor profitable. Corporate bodies did not care to spend money on the adornment of their guild halls, and ordinary householders had no room for large pictures. Englishmen are essentially _domestic_, and pictures small enough to hang in small houses, and illustrative of home life, suit their necessities, and appeal to their feelings far more strongly than vast canvases representing battles or sacred histories. In _genre_ painting the Dutch school has ever been prominent; to it we doubtless owe much of the popularity of this branch of art in England, where our painters have chosen familiar subjects, without descending to the coarse or sensual incidents in which some old Dutch artists delighted. The _genre_ painters of this country have mainly drawn their subjects from our national poets and prose writers and the every-day life of Englishmen, sometimes verging on the side of triviality, but on the whole including pleasing works, which, as it has been well said, "bear the same relation to historic art as the tale or novel does to history." DAVID WILKIE (1785--1841) was born in his father's manse at Cults, Fifeshire. It was fully intended that Wilkie should follow in his father's steps, and become a minister of the Scottish Kirk, but it was not to be so. He was placed, at his own earnest desire, in the Trustees' Academy, at Edinburgh, and there in 1803 justified the wisdom of this choice by gaining the ten-guinea premium for the best painting of the time, the subject being _Callisto in the Baths of Diana_. Next year young Wilkie visited his home, and painted _Piltassie Fair_, which he sold for L25. He painted portraits, and with the money thus acquired went to London in 1805. Having entered himself as a student at the Academy, Wilkie soon attracted attention by the _Village Politicians_, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1806. One hundred of his paintings appeared from time to time on the Academy walls; each succeeding early work added to its author's fame. All his earlier works were _genre_ pictures. His favourite subjects are shown in _The Blind Fiddler_, _Card-Players_, _The Rent Day_, _The Jew's Harp_, _The Cut Finger_, _The Village Festival_, _Blindman's Buff_, _The Letter of Introduction_, _Duncan Gray_, _The Penny Wedding_, _Reading the Will_, _The Parish Beadle_, and _The Chelsea Pensioners_, the last painted for the Duke of Wellington. Wilkie was elected A.R.A. in 1809, and a full member in 1811. He went abroad in 1814, and again in 1825, when he visited Germany, Italy, and Spain. The study of the old masters, especially Correggio, Rembrandt, and Velazquez, had a marked effect on Wilkie, who changed both his style and subjects. He forsook _genre_ for