only proved that portrait painting is interesting to a _few_—that in the hands of Reynolds it was “employed in diffusing friendship, in renewing tenderness, in quickening the affections of the absent, and continuing the presence of the dead.” Reynolds himself, however, without forgetting these important prerogatives, evidently took a more extended view of the matter; he seems early to have felt that the chief difficulty of portrait painting (a difficulty perhaps greater than any in the other branches of art) is to make the representation _generally_ interesting. It is quite obvious that this end can only be attained (especially as beauty of form is not always at command) by a high degree of perfection in all that constitutes the charm of art; for no interest that attaches itself to the individual pourtrayed, however celebrated, can be so universal or so independently intelligible as that which arises from a large and true imitation of nature, to which all are more or less alive. The perfection of art as applicable to portrait painting, was therefore Reynolds’s great object, and it was only in subservience to this that he ventured to introduce what in his hands might be considered a novelty in this department. That novelty was the historic air he often gave his portraits, by happy allusions to some important circumstance in the life of the individual. His consummate knowledge of effect enabled him to do this by means which never interfere with the mere portrait, a difficulty which had been in a great measure evaded by preceding painters. It will be remembered that in most of the portraits even of Titian and Vandyck the attention is literally confined to the individual pourtrayed (after all, the subject of the picture), and it was not lightly or inconsiderately that Reynolds occasionally departed from this judicious practice. If ever a painter could depend on the mere character and expression of his heads, to say nothing of the charm of their execution, Reynolds undoubtedly would have been secure of the public approbation on those grounds alone; and it was only where historic interest happened to coincide or to interfere but little with picturesque effect, that he ventured on the additions alluded to. A better instance perhaps cannot be given than the portrait of Lord Heathfield (celebrated for his defence of Gibraltar), in the National Gallery; in the background of which a cannon pointed downwards indicates, by its angle of depression, the elevation of the spot where the veteran stands, grasping the keys of the fortress which he defended so bravely. In his allegorical portraits, such as Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy, Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse, &c., Reynolds encountered a much greater difficulty, and it may be questioned whether any painter who has yet appeared would have succeeded better. The mixture of real and imaginary beings, of individual and abstract personifications, the treatment of which would seem to require