This picture, in the National Gallery, London, has inscribed on the canvas: "Lady Giorgiana Fane; 1800. Æt 5." It shows Lawrence's method of treating a child's portrait, in the style dear to our ancestors, as a "fancy" portrait. It is also typical of his pronounced mannerism, which would lead one to believe that before the days of photography sitters were easily contented on the score of resemblance. The head in this picture, for instance, is almost identical with that of Napoleon's son in the "Roi de Rome," executed fifteen years later.] [Illustration: MRS. SIDDONS. FROM A PAINTING BY SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE. The greatest of all English actresses, at least in tragic parts--is the common judgment on Mrs. Siddons. She was almost born and reared on the stage, her father, Roger Kemble, being the manager of a travelling company of actors, with one of whom, William Siddons, she had married when she was eighteen. She was born at Brecon, in Wales, July 5, 1755, and had already attained to some distinction as an actress in 1775, when she made her first appearance in London. From then until her retirement in 1812 her career was a succession of triumphs. She died in London, June 8, 1831. Naturally, she was a favorite subject with the portrait painters of her time. The sweet-faced girl shown in the above portrait has as little resemblance to the stately lady of Gainsborough, or the "Tragic Muse" of Sir Joshua Reynolds, as it has to our imagination of what a "tragic queen" should be. The picture is, nevertheless, a portrait of _the_ Mrs. Siddons, and was presented to the National Gallery, London, where it now is, by her daughter, Mrs. Cecelia Combe, in 1868.] Time has enhanced the value of Hoppner's work somewhat at the expense of his great rival, Lawrence. While the latter remains, from youth to comparative old age, a most astonishing example of facile and brilliant execution, the less obtrusive, possibly more timid, attitude of Hoppner in the presence of nature gives him a greater claim to our sympathy to-day. He was apparently preoccupied above all in rendering the individual characteristics of his sitter; and there are many instances in his work where a painter can see that he has chosen to retain certain qualities of resemblance, rather than risk their loss by an exhibition of _bravura_ painting. Sir Thomas Lawrence is one, on the contrary, before whose pictures it is felt that the principal question has been to make it first of all a typical example of his work. [Illustration: LADY BLESSINGTON. FROM A PAINTING BY SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE.