This gross style of mechanical practice, which the theory now combated certainly originated, has spread over the whole of English portraiture a coarseness of effect and unfinished appearance, destitute of the agreeable lightness of a sketch, and yet without the clear and well-defined solidity of a highly-wrought picture. In like manner, the striving at some delusive, some shadowy excellence of general expression, instead of representing the air and character exactly as in the countenance of the sitter, has greatly depreciated the intellectual qualities of our art. Hence the unmeaning, common-place look which most of portraits cast at the spectator. Doubtless, in every countenance there is a general impress of thought or feeling, which may be said to constitute the habitual mental likeness of the individual. This it is of the first importance faithfully to transfer to the canvass. Without this, indeed, the most correct and elaborate pronouncing of the separate features is of no comparative value. Hence, however, it by no means follows, that 'individual peculiarities' are to be resigned. On the contrary, when judiciously introduced, they will give force by the very addition of individuality to the general resemblance. It is this which imparts the speaking impress of thought and mind to the portraits of Raphael and Titian, where 'the rapt soul sitting in the eye' seems to breathe, in all its historic energies, from the canvass. It astonishes, indeed, that such precepts should have been delivered by one who must have been sensible, that the reformation which he accomplished in contemporary art, was mainly owing to his having exploded the very same notions of generalizing resemblance, and of middle forms, held by his predecessors. In fact, Reynolds was superior to Lely or Kneller, or even Hudson, chiefly as he approached nearer to nature, by discarding mannered, conventional, and systematic modifications of her realities. And he is superior to himself exactly in those works where he has left out his own peculiar 'ways of seeing nature,' and has given her honestly and faithfully as she actually did appear. Thus his best portraits are those of his intimate friends;--men whose habits of thought and action were pressed upon him by constant observance, and in veneration of whom, and of all that belonged to them, he forgot his system in the subject before him. Such are the portraits of Dr Johnson, of Baretti, of Goldsmith, of Burney, and two of the finest and most powerful likenesses in the world, of John Hunter and Bishop Newton. As it was with Sir Joshua, so will it be with every other artist. He must not merely imitate, he must resign himself to, nature; become as a little child, leaving all artifice and false knowledge, and receive from her the precepts of truth and soberness.