As a painter, one of George Morland's pupils, _William Collins_, threw the world into ecstasies by his pictures of children. Out of one hundred and twenty-one which he exhibited in the Academy in the course of forty years the principal are: the picture of "The Little Flute-Player," "The Sale of the Pet Lamb," "Boys with a Bird's Nest," "The Fisher's Departure," "Scene in a Kentish Hop-Garden," and the picture of the swallows. The most popular were "Happy as a King"--a small boy whom his elder playmates have set upon a garden railing, from which he looks down laughing proudly--and "Rustic Civility"--children who have drawn up like soldiers, by a fence, so as to salute some one who is approaching. But it is clear from the titles of such pictures that in this province English _genre_ painting did not free itself from the reproach of being episodic. Collins was richer in ideas than Meyer of Bremen. His children receive earrings, sit on their mother's knee, play with her in the garden, watch her sewing, read aloud to her from their spelling-book, learn their lessons, and are frightened of the geese and hens which advance in a terrifying fashion towards them in the poultry-yard. He is an admirable painter of children at the family table, of the pleasant chatter of the little ones, of the father watching his sleeping child of an evening by the light of the lamp, with his heart full of pride and joy because he has the consciousness of working for those who are near to him. Being naturally very fond of children, he has painted the life of little people with evident enjoyment of all its variations, and yet not in a thoroughly credible fashion. Chardin painted the poetry of the child-world. His little ones have no suspicion of the painter being near them. They are harmlessly occupied with themselves, and in their ordinary clothes. Those of Collins look as if they were repeating a copybook maxim at a school examination. They know that the eyes of all the sightseers in the exhibition are fixed upon them, and they are doing their utmost to be on their best behaviour. They have a lack of unconsciousness. One would like to say to them: "My dear children, always be good." But no one is grateful to the painter for taking from children their childishness, and for bringing into vogue that codling which had its way for so long afterwards in the pictures of children.