unmitigated prettiness that is usually associated with the cheapest kind of pictorial imbecility. But let her not be condemned unheard. That she was an exceedingly pretty woman need hardly be doubted, and that she wished to be made as pretty as possible in her portrait may fairly be taken for granted. If she had any other qualities it is probable that her name would be remembered for them. As it is, Romney has conscientiously painted a portrait of her which probably pleased her almost as much as it pleases all of us to-day. “In his composition,” we remember, “the beholder was forcibly struck by the sentiment at the first glance.” How true this is of Mrs. Currie and her prettiness! The painter’s whole effort is concentrated on that one quality, and instead of dissipating the beholder’s attention with accessories, he soothes it with a seeming artlessness which no one but a great painter could nearly accomplish. Mrs. Currie’s drapery is of course strictly English--in substance at any rate and form. But here again we feel the guiding or restraining hand of the Classic Muse, just as we should have seen it had Romney been painting Mrs. Currie in the character of Antigone. As it was, Romney was speaking English and not Greek; only it is the English, as it were, of a finely educated man. But in placing Romney so high above the crowd of ordinary portrait painters, and a little higher than any except Reynolds and Gainsborough, it is only fair to consider how far short he fell of equalling those two. And it must not be forgotten that the limitations which he imposed upon himself were quite as likely to affect his popularity among his patrons and their friends as with posterity. Classic simplicity is an invaluable quality in the portraiture of everyday men and women, especially when the latter are young and pretty; but a gallery of portraits by Romney would afford a much narrower view of the capabilities of the English School than a similar exhibition of the work of Reynolds or Gainsborough. The oft-repeated assertion of Lord Chancellor Thurlow that “Reynolds and Romney divide the town, and I am of the Romney faction,” must be taken with a considerably larger pinch of salt than is popularly accepted with it. In the first place, Romney was not at all in fashion until after his return from Rome in 1785, by which time Reynolds had been painting portraits for at least twenty years. Gainsborough, too, who was by seven years the senior of Romney, was quite as many years ahead of him in practice, though he had only recently come to London from Bath. In the year 1785 we know that Romney earned £3635 from portraits. At this time, so his pupil Robinson records, his prices were £20 for a head, £30 for a kit-cat, £40 for a half-length, and £80 for a whole length. Taking the average at as low a figure as £35, this means about a hundred commissions in his busiest year. This is certainly a large number, and Sir Joshua never had more