Lastly, for his classicism, which is the really distinguishing characteristic of Romney’s portraits and includes in it all the others. “On his arrival in Italy,” Flaxman tells us, “he was witness to new scenes of art, and sources of study ... he there contemplated the purity and perfection of ancient sculpture, the sublimity of Michel Angelo’s Sistine chapel, and the simplicity of Cimabue’s and Giotto’s schools. He perceived these qualities [namely, be it observed, sublimity and simplicity] distinctly, and judiciously used them in viewing and imitating nature; and thus his quick perception and unwearied application enabled him by a two years’ residence abroad to acquire as great a proficiency in art as is usually attained by foreign studies of much longer duration.” And again, “His cartoons ... were examples of the sublime and terrible at that time perfectly new in English art. The Dream of Atossa, from the Persians of Æschylus, contrasted the death-like sleep of the Queen with the Bacchanalian Fury of the Genius of Greece. The composition was conducted with the fire and severity of a Greek bas-relief.” How many of the thousands of visitors to the National Gallery would ever imagine that this last paragraph was written of the painter of _The Parson’s Daughter_, or _Mrs. Mark Currie_? And yet here, I cannot help feeling, is the real strength which underlies the structure of even the airiest of Romney’s paintings. The roots of genius must grow deep if its branches are to grow high. The foundations of a great building must be firm. The faintest breeze of enlightened judgment is enough to blow away the ornamental bungalows of the Victorian portrait-painters, while castle Romney stands as firm as the rock on which it was built. “In trying to attain excellence in his art,” Flaxman continues, “his diligence was unceasing as his gratification in the employment. He endeavoured to combine all the possible advantages of the subject immediately before him, and to exclude whatever had a tendency to weaken it. His compositions, like those of the ancient pictures and basso-relievos, told their story by a single group of figures in the front, whilst the background is made the simplest possible, rejecting all unnecessary episode and trivial ornament, either of secondary groups or architectural subdivision. In his compositions the beholder was forcibly struck by the sentiment at the first glance, the gradations and varieties of which he traced through several characters all conceived in an elevated spirit of dignity and beauty, with a lively expression of nature in all the parts.” Although written of his classical compositions, this criticism of Flaxman, who was himself more severely classical in his art than the Greeks, applies with almost equal truth to his portraits. It throws into light the hidden force that gives them their strength, that keeps them before us as live men and women instead of painted puppets and dolls. [Illustration: LADY CRAVEN