“Genius,” Johnson wrote, “is chiefly exerted in historical pictures, and the art of the painter of portraits is often lost in the obscurity of the subject. But it is in painting as in life: what is greatest is not always best. I should grieve to see Reynolds transfer to heroes and to goddesses, to empty splendour and to airy fiction, that art which is now employed in diffusing friendship, in renewing tenderness, in quickening the affections of the absent and continuing the presence of the dead. Every man is always present to himself, and has therefore little need of his own resemblance; nor can he desire it but for the sake of those whom he loves and by whom he hopes to be remembered. This use of the art is a natural and reasonable consequence of affection, and though, like all other human actions, it is often complicated with pride, yet even such pride is more laudable than that by which palaces are covered with pictures that, however excellent, neither imply the owners virtue nor excite it.” This was written to combat the assertion that Sir Joshua, in confining himself to portraiture, was hardly practising what he was always preaching. But preaching was very much wanted at this stage of the development of art in England, though not exactly the preaching of the Established Church. The Dean of Gloucester had said on the occasion of a meeting of the Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, that he thought a pinmaker was a more useful and valuable member of society than Raphael. Reynolds was of the contrary opinion, which he committed to paper: “This is an observation of a very narrow mind; a mind that is confined to the mere object of commerce; that sees with a microscopic eye but a part of the great machine of the economy of life, and thinks that small part which he sees to be the whole. “Commerce is the means, not the end, of happiness or pleasure. The end is a rational enjoyment of life by means of arts and sciences. It is therefore the highest degree of folly to set the means in a higher rank of esteem than the accomplished end. It is as much as to say that the brickmaker is a more useful member of society than the architect who employs him. The usefulness of the brickmaker is acknowledged, but the rank of him and of the architect are very different. “No man deserves better of mankind than he who has the art of opening sources of intellectual pleasure and instruction by means of the senses.” * * * * *