into the contrasted and theatrical. His picture of Mrs Siddons, as the Tragic Muse, however, is pronounced by Sir Thomas Lawrence to be 'a work of the highest epic character, and indisputably the finest female portrait in the world.' How far, however, either that, or the no less celebrated picture of Garrick, can rank with historical portraitures, at least considered with those of Raphael and Titian, may justly be questioned. Of the more elevated and serious historical compositions of Sir Joshua, the Death of Cardinal Beaufort is the grandest, the best drawn, and the most powerfully colored; the only defect is the expression, which is too material; Ugolino is a failure, if intended for the fierce inmate of Dante's 'tower of famine:' these want dignity and truth of character. The designs at Oxford are fine; the Nativity, in imitation of the famous Notte of Coreggio, is a splendid performance. Sir Joshua Reynolds, then, owed more to taste and application than to genius; more to incessant practice than to science; he derived all from his predecessors which he has bequeathed to posterity; but if, in making the transmission, he added no new nor essential principle of imitation or invention, he established in high practical excellence the arts of his country. Among those whose labours in historical painting connect the former with the present school, Barry stands foremost in time as in merit. The performances of this artist exhibit, in a very striking manner, the justice of some of the preceding remarks. They are destitute of the most essential and touching graces of imitative representation; they want, in short, all that portraiture, which their author affected to despise, could have given--life, nature, truth, and sweetness, without this absence being compensated by any extraordinary beauties of what is termed higher art. The drawing, though often good, is also not seldom defective; while the coloring is uniformly harsh, and the management without force. Imagination and invention run riot without due control of the judgment; not that the fervor of poetic enthusiasm snatches a too daring grace, but rather the unpruned fertility of conception frequently unites the most glaring incongruities. Yet Barry is far from being without power or science; his great deficiences were a chaste taste and mellowed practice. No man better understood, or has written more learnedly, on the abstract principles of composition; indeed, he has been accused of devoting too much attention to the mere theory and literature of his art, while he neglected Raphael's golden application of Cicero's maxim--'Nulla dies sine linea.' There existed, however, in the character of Barry, notwithstanding a rudeness of exterior, and ignorance or disregard of the proprieties of polished life, a moral grandeur of unshaken resolve, of enduring enthusiasm, of stern and uncompromising self-denial, in his professional career, which invest his memory with no common interest.