The reader will mistake me greatly if he supposes that in showing why it was impossible there should be a good portrait of Dr. Daniel Dove, I meant to depreciate the art of portrait painting. I have a very high respect for that art, and no person can be more sincerely persuaded of its moral uses. The great number of portraits in the annual exhibitions of our Royal Academy is so far from displeasing me that I have always regarded it as a symptom of wholesome feeling in the nation,—an unequivocal proof that the domestic and social affections are still existing among us in their proper strength, and cherished as they ought to be. And when I have heard at any time observations of the would-be-witty kind upon the vanity of those who allow their portraits thus to be hung up for public view, I have generally perceived that the remark implied a much greater degree of conceit in the speaker. As for allowing the portrait to be exhibited, that is no more than an act of justice to the artist, who has no other means of making his abilities known so well, and of forwarding himself in his profession. If we look round the rooms at Somerset House, and observe how large a proportion of the portraits represent children, the old, and persons in middle life, we shall see that very few indeed are those which can have been painted, or exhibited for the gratification of personal vanity. Sir Thomas Lawrence ministers largely to self-admiration: and yet a few years ripen even the most flattering of his portraits into moral pictures; _Perchè, donne mie care, la beltà Ha l' ali al capo, a le spalle ed a' piè: E vola si, che non si scorge più Vestigio alcun ne' visi, dove fù._[1] [Footnote 1: RICCIARDETTO.]