The subject of Wilkie’s pictures are confined to what may be called the higher classes of low life, where the habits and institutions of modern society have hitherto, in a great measure, failed to diffuse that artificial and conventional form of character, which, if it does not altogether preclude the _action_ of the feelings, at least forbids all outward manifestation of them. If Sir David had unfortunately devoted his peculiar and unrivalled power of depicting what _is_, to scenes in high, or even in middle life, he would have produced works altogether feeble and worthless; because he could only represent what actually did exist; and, in these classes of life, _this_, as far as regards its outward attributes, is smoothed and polished down to a plane and colorless surface, which will not admit the passage of any thing from within, and from which every thing without slides off like water-drops from the feathers of a bird. Only think of making a picture of a party of _ladies and gentlemen_, assembled to hear a piece of political news read; or of the same persons listening to a solo on the violin by an eminent professor! And yet these are the subjects of Wilkie’s Village Politicians, and his Blind Fiddler; two of the most interesting and perfect works that ever proceeded from the pencil; and which at once evince in the artist, and excite in the spectator, more activity of thought, and play of sentiment, than are called forth at all the fashionable parties of London and Paris for a whole season. Wilkie’s power was confined, as I have said, to the representation of what he saw; but he selected and combined this with such admirable judgment, and represented it with such unrivalled truth and precision, that his pictures impress themselves on the memory with all the force and reality of facts. We remember, and recur to, the scenes he places before us, just as we should to the real scenes if we had been present at them; and can hardly think of, and refer to them as any thing _but_ real scenes. They seem to become part of our experience—to increase the stores of our actual knowledge of life and human nature; and the actors in them take their places among the persons we have seen and known in our intercourse with the living world.