When the most we hear of GEORGE ROMNEY nowadays is the price that has been paid for one of his portraits at Christie's, it is refreshing as well as informative to turn to the criticism of one of his greatest though not in these times so highly priced contemporaries, I mean John Flaxman. "When Romney first began to paint," he writes, "he had seen no gallery of pictures nor the fine productions of ancient sculpture; but then women and children were his statues, and all objects under the canopy of heaven formed his school of painting. The rainbow, the purple distance, or the silver lake, taught him colouring; the various actions and passions of the human figure, with the forms of clouds, woods, and mountains or valleys, afforded him studies of composition. Indeed, his genius bore a strong resemblance to the scenes he was born in; like them, it partook of the grand and beautiful; and like them also, the bright sunshine and enchanting prospects of his fancy were occasionally overspread with mist and gloom. On his arrival in Italy he was witness to new scenes of art and sources of study of which he could only have supposed previously that something [Illustration: PLATE XLII.--GEORGE ROMNEY THE PARSON'S DAUGHTER _National Gallery, London_] of the kind might exist; for he there contemplated the purity and perfection of ancient sculpture, the sublimity of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel, and the simplicity of Cimabue and Giotto's schools. He perceived those qualities 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 a much longer duration.