Reynolds loved to depict his sitters in mythological or historical settings. Thus he painted Mrs. Hartley, her son as a nymph and the youthful Bacchus, the three Misses Montgomery as the Three Graces crowning a term of Hymen, a little girl sitting on the grass as the "Age of Innocence," Lady Spencer as a gipsy telling her brother's fortune, Mrs. Sheridan as St. Cecilia. The five "Heads of Angels," as they are called, in the National Gallery, are five different studies of the lovely child-head of little Isabella Gordon. Garrick, in one of his pictures, is set between the allegorical figures of Tragedy and Comedy. Reynolds himself was frankly proud of these portraits in the mood of history. He was, as he said, in general only a portrait painter because the world required it; that which he aspired after was the great manner of historical painting. Nevertheless, pictures, such as the "Little Hercules with the Serpent," "Cupid unfastening the Girdle of Venus," "The Death of Dido," "The Forbearance of Scipio," "The Childhood of the Prophet Samuel," or "The Adoration of the Shepherds," do not cause us to deplore too bitterly that he rarely found time for such mythological and historical pictures. His _putti_ are derived from Correggio; in the arrangement of drapery he resembles Guido; in his "Venus" he is a coarser Titian. Reynolds' own manner in these pictures is merely the eclectic accumulation of the peculiarities of the old masters--he brought no new element into historical painting. [Illustration: REYNOLDS. LADY COCKBURN AND HER DAUGHTERS.]