We have two well-marked drawings before us, in which we recognise the capabilities of the art for producing pictures of composition. They are _tableaux vivants_ transferred by the calotype. In the one[Footnote: See Frontispiece] a bonneted mechanic rests over his mallet on a tombstone--his one arm bared above his elbow; the other wrapped up in the well-indicated shirt folds, and resting on a piece of grotesque sculpture. There is a powerful sun; the somewhat rigid folds in the dress of coarse stuff are well marked; one half the face is in deep shade, the other in strong light; the churchyard wall throws a broad shadow behind, while in the foreground there is a gracefully chequered breadth of intermingled dark and light in the form of a mass of rank grass and foliage. Had an old thin man of striking figure and features been selected, and some study-worn scholar introduced in front of him, the result would have been a design ready for the engraver when employed in illustrating the _Old Mortality_ of Sir Walter. The other drawing presents a _tableau vivant_ on a larger scale, and of a much deeper interest. It forms one of the groups taken under the eye of Mr. Hill, as materials for the composition of his historic picture. In the centre Dr. Chalmers sits on the Moderator's chair, and there are grouped round him, as on the platform, some eighteen or twenty of the better known members of the Church, clerical and lay. Nothing can be more admirable than the truthfulness and ease of the figures. Wilkie, in his representations of a crowd, excelled in introducing heads, and hands, and faces, and parts of faces into the interstices behind,--one of the greatest difficulties with which the artist can grapple. Here, however, is the difficulty surmounted--surmounted, too, as if to bear testimony to the genius of the departed--in the style of Wilkie. We may add further, that the great massiveness of the head of Chalmers, compared with the many fine heads around him, is admirably brought out in this drawing.