The fact that his mother was a Frenchwoman (his father was Henry Morland, the painter of the delightful pair of half-lengths, _The Laundry Maids_) suggests to my mind the wild surmise that she may have been the daughter of Chardin. For in the technique as well as in the temperament of Morland,--making allowance for difference of circumstances,--there is something remarkably akin to those of the great Frenchman. Both eschewed the temptation to become fashionable, both painted the humble realities of middle-class life with a zest that could not possibly have been affected, and both painted them with much the same extraordinary charm. At his best, Morland is not much inferior to Chardin, and but for his unfortunate wildness and his susceptibility to the temptations of strong drink, he might easily have excelled the other. The feeling exhibited in two such different subjects as Lord Glenconner's _Boys Robbing an Orchard_, and _The Interior of a Stable_, in the National Gallery, certainly equals that of Chardin's most famous pieces, I mean the feeling for the particular scene he is depicting. The nearest, in fact the only, approach that Morland made to portrait painting was in such pieces as _The Fortune Teller_ in the National Gallery, which brings to mind the "Conversation Pieces," introduced by Hogarth and Highmore into English painting, but which were never widely attempted. In the Portfolio monograph "English Society in the Eighteenth Century" I tried to collect as many examples as I could of this form of art, but found it difficult to fill even a small volume, so entirely was the single figure portrait the vogue. A few notable instances are worth mentioning, if only as exceptions to the general rule. Gainsborough's _Ladies Walking in the Mall_, belonging to Sir Audley Neeld; Reynolds's large group of _The Marlborough Family_ at Blenheim, and a very early group of _The Elliott Family_, consisting of eleven figures, belonging to Lord St Germans; John Singleton Copley's _Children of Francis Sitwell, Esq._, at Renishaw; and lastly Zoffany's _Family Party_, at Panshanger. For life-like representation of the English people we look to Hogarth and Morland, and yet nothing could be more different than the motives which inspired the two, and the way they went to work upon their subject. Hogarth was above all things theatrical, Morland natural. Hogarth first conceived his idea, then laid his scene, and lastly peopled it with actual characters as they appeared--individually--before him. Morland simply looked about him and painted what he happened to see at the precise moment when what he saw coincided with his natural inclination, or we may even say inspiration, to paint it. It was much the same difference as between the work of Zola and that of Thomas Hardy. The one had a moral to preach, the other a story to tell. * * * * *