young painter to go for a cruise in his ship. They sailed in 1749, and Reynolds was able to spend three years in Italy. [Illustration: _Cassell & Co._ REYNOLDS. MRS SIDDONS.] His first impression was one of bitter disappointment. Where was that rich colouring in the Italian classics which he had been led to expect from English mezzotints? Everything struck him as lifeless, pale, insipid. Whereupon he affected the opinion that there was no more to be seen in Rome. Raphael, in particular, appeared to him to be a mediocre painter, whom only a remarkable chance had brought to such a pitch of fame. Surrounded by the great masterpieces of the Cinquecento, he employed himself in drawing caricatures, and made a sort of travesty of the _School of Athens_, in which he drew caricatures of the English colony in Rome at that time, in the attitudes of figures in the pictures of Raphael. But he very speedily changed his opinion, and began to follow the paths of the great dead. He went indefatigably through the galleries of Rome, from Rubens to Titian, from Correggio to Guido and Raphael. He studied so hard in the Vatican, that he took a chill in the cold rooms, which left him all his life a little deaf. That sojourn at Rome was to Reynolds what, a hundred years later, his visit to Spain was to Lenbach. He had already at Hudson's acquired great facility as a copyist, and of Guercino, in particular, he had made numerous copies. During this Italian tour, however, he became the greatest connoisseur of old masters that the eighteenth century possessed. It is related that the Chevalier Van Loo, when he was in England in 1763, vaunted himself one day, in Reynolds' presence, upon his unfailing discrimination in telling a copy from an original. Whereupon Reynolds showed him one of his own studies of a head, after Rembrandt. The Chevalier judged it to be, indisputably, a masterpiece by the great Dutchman. [Illustration: REYNOLDS. DR. JOHNSON] He left Rome in April 1752, and made a further visit to Naples, to the cities of Tuscany, and to Venice. The careless notes of travel that he made on this journey show the clear insight which he had attained into the Italian schools. They all deal with questions of technique, on effects of light and shadow, on the mystery of _chiaroscuro_. For Titian, in particular, he had an extravagant devotion,--he would ruin himself, he said, if he might only possess one of the great works of Titian.