artists who formed the exhibition at the Spring Garden Room, who in 1765 obtained a Charter from the king. Owing partly to internal disagreements, but more no doubt to the foundation of the Royal Academy in 1768, this Society gradually diminished in importance, until Edwards could write of their exhibition in 1791 that "the articles they had then collected were very insignificant, most of which could not be considered as works of art; such as pieces of needlework, subjects in human hair, cut paper, and such similar productions as deserve not the recommendation of a public exhibition," * * * * * To the first exhibition of the Royal Academy, which was opened on the 2nd of January 1769, Reynolds sent three pictures:-- _The Duchess of Manchester and her son, as Diana disarming Cupid._ _Lady Blake, as Juno receiving the Cestus of Venus._ _Miss Morris as Hope nursing Love._ That all of them were, so to speak, "fancy portraits" is not entirely without significance. Portraiture, the painters bread and butter, was apparently deemed hardly suitable for the occasion, and among a list of the pictures which attracted most attention Northcote only includes the portraits of the _King and Queen_ by Nathaniel Dance, _Lady Molyneux_ by Gainsborough, and the _Duke of Gloucester_ by Cotes. The rest are as follows:--_The Departure of Regulus from Rome_, and _Venus lamenting the Death of Adonis_, by Benjamin West; _Hector and Andromache_, and _Venus directing Aeneas and Achates_, by Angelica Kauffmann; _A Piping Boy_, and _A Candlelight Piece_, by Nathaniel Hone; _An Altar-Piece_ of the Annunciation by Cipriani; _Hebe_, and _A Boy Playing Cricket_, by Cotes; A landscape by Barrett, and _Shakespeare's Black-smith_, by Penny. In all, Reynolds exhibited two hundred and fifty-two pictures during the thirty-two years of his life in which exhibitions existed, namely from 1760 to 1791; of which two hundred and twenty-eight went to the Royal Academy. Of these, or most of them, ample records and criticisms may be found in the copious literature which has grown up around his name. For our present purpose a glance at his influence, his methods, and his circumstances has seemed to me to be more in point, and as a succinct estimate of the man and his work from one of his most illustrious contemporaries, the following passage may be added by way of conclusion:--