Lawrence is gone; and though Gérard on this side of the water, and indeed too many to rehearse on both, are left, whose portraitures of the human face are admirable; true to nature; true to art; true to expression,--true, even to the want of it; I am greatly inclined to believe that the enormous sums annually expended on these clever portraits contribute more to lower than to raise the art in popularity and in the genuine estimation of the public. The sums thus lavished may be termed patronage, certainly; but it is patronage that bribes the artist to the restraint, and often to the destruction, of his genius. Is there, in fact, any one who can honestly deny that a splendid exhibition-room, crowded with ladies and gentlemen on canvass, as large as life, is a lounge of great tediousness and inanity? We may feel some satisfaction in recognising at a glance the eyes, nose, mouth, and chin of many of our friends and acquaintance,--nay, our most critical judgment may often acknowledge that these familiar features are registered with equal truth and skill; but this will not prevent the exhibition from being very dull. Nor is the thing much mended when each portrait, or pair of portraits, has been withdrawn from the gaudy throng, and hung up for ever and for ever before the eyes of their family and friends. The fair lady, sweetly smiling in one division of the apartment, and the well-dressed gentleman looking _distingué_ in another, contribute as little at home as they did when suspended on the walls of the academy to the real pleasure and amusement of the beholder. At the exhibition this year at the Louvre are many exquisite full-length portraits in oil, of which the canvass measures from eighteen inches to a foot in height, and from a foot to ten inches in width. The composition and style of these beautiful little pictures are often such as to detain one long before them, even though one does not recognise in them the features of an acquaintance. Their unobtrusive size must prevent their ever being disagreeably predominant in the decoration of a room; while their delicate and elaborate finish, and the richness of their highly-studied composition, will well reward attention; and even the closest examination, when directed to them, either by politeness, affection, or connoisseurship, can never be disappointed. The Catalogue of the exhibition notices all the pictures which have been either ordered or purchased by the king or any of the royal family; and the number is so considerable as to show plainly that the most liberal and widely-extended patronage of art is a systematic object with the government.