There we see the skilful portrait of Sterne, with his look of witty mockery; the marvellous Bohemian, Oliver Goldsmith, who even then had the manuscript of his _Vicar of Wakefield_ in his pocket; Johnson, who, in one, sits at his writing-table, on which stands an ink-pot and a volume of his _English Dictionary_, and in another is peering into a book with his short-sighted eyes screwed up tightly, and his whole posture awkward and unwieldy. Garrick, who went from one studio to the other, appears also more than once in Reynolds' portrait gallery. Amongst his portraits of military dignitaries, that of General Lord Heathfield, the famous defender of Gibraltar, whom he painted in full uniform, is one of the most noticeable. Strong as a rock he stands there, with the key of the fortress in his hand. What a contrast between these figures and those of the contemporary French portraits! There, those friendly and smiling ministers, those gallant and dainty ecclesiastics, those scented, graceful marquises, who move with such elegant ease about the parquet floor, and from whose faces a uniform refinement has erased all the roughness of individuality; here, expressive, thoughtful heads, characters hardened in the school of life, many of the faces coarse and bloated, the glance telling of cold resolution, the attitude full of self-reliant dignity and gnarled, plebeian pride. The same _bourgeois_ element predominates in the pictures of the ladies. Van Dyck's noble, eminently intellectual figures always wore the glamour of the Renaissance. In the background an artistically arranged curtain, a column, or the view of the quiet avenues of some broad park. From Reynolds we get strong active women in their everyday clothes, and with thoughtful countenances: good mothers, surrounded by their children, whom they kiss and enfold in a tender embrace. The idea of half-symbolical representation has vanished, and in its place is introduced the idea of home and the family. The pictures of children by this childless old bachelor were an artistic revelation to the existing generation, and are the delight of the world of to-day. In other portraits of ladies, that noticeable characteristic of the English nation, their predilection for domestic animals and for sport, finds an expression. The beautiful Duchess of Devonshire he painted as she gently restrained with her finger her little daughter's caresses, which would fain have disordered her _coiffure_; a whole gallery of noble ladies he represented feeding their poultry or petting their lap-dogs; Lady Spencer in her riding-habit, her whip in her hand, her horse reined in, her cheeks flushed from her gallop. Nelly O'Brien looks an actress, a woman who turned men's heads, and she does it still to-day in Reynolds' picture. There lurks something enigmatic, perplexing in the smile of this sphinx--only Monna Lisa had such a smile, but Nelly's eyes are deeper, more desirous. One feels that in the three centuries since Monna