writer, became mannerists and imitators.[32] It may be said in answer to this, that all painting is but imitation. Granted; but if we go no further than copying what has been done before, without entering into the spirit, causes, and effects, what are we doing? If we vary from our original, we fall off from it, and it ceases to be a copy; and if we strictly adhere to it, we can have no hopes of getting beyond it; for 'if two men ride on a horse, one of them must be behind.' "To return to our own academy. By the regulations I have mentioned of a general equality, etc., it has now subsisted near thirty years, and is, to every useful purpose, equal to that in France, or any other; but this does not satisfy. The members, finding his present Majesty's partiality to the arts, met at the Turk's Head in Gerard Street, Soho, laid out the public money in advertisements to call all sorts of artists together, and have resolved to draw up and present a ridiculous address to King, Lords, and Commons to do for them what they have (as well as it can be) done for themselves. Thus to pester the three great estates of the empire, about twenty or thirty students, drawing after a man or a horse, appears, as it must be acknowledged, foolish enough; but the real motive is, that a few bustling characters, who have access to people of rank, think they can thus get a superiority over their brethren, be appointed to places, and have salaries as in France, for telling a lad when an arm or a leg is too long or too short. "Not approving of this plan, I opposed it; and having refused to assign to the society the property which I had before lent them, I am accused of acrimony, ill-nature, and spleen, and held forth as an enemy to the arts and artists. How far their mighty project will succeed, I neither know nor care; certain I am it deserves to be laughed at, and laughed at it has been.[33] The business rests in the breast of Majesty, and the simple question now is, whether he will do what Sir James Thornhill did before him, _i.e._ establish an academy with the little addition of a royal name, and salaries for those professors who can make most interest and obtain the greatest patronage. As his Majesty's beneficence to the arts will unquestionably induce him to do that which he thinks most likely to promote them, would it not be more useful if he were to furnish his own gallery with one picture by each of the most eminent painters among his own subjects? This might possibly set an example to a few of the opulent nobility; but even then it is to be feared that there never can be a market in this country, for the great number of works which, by encouraging parents to place their children in this line, it would probably cause to be painted. The world is already glutted with these commodities, which do not perish fast enough to want such a supply.