captivating little rogue, Puck. The
saucy elf is perched on a mushroom, resting after a frolic, and
apparently plotting new escapades.

A complete enumeration and description of Reynolds's child pictures
would fill a bulky volume, so eagerly, through a period of over thirty
years, were the great portrait painter's services demanded by all the
distinguished families of the day. Of special interest and beauty are
some of the portraits of mothers with their children. The lovely Lady
Waldegrave, clasping her babe to her breast, is one of these, while
another is the celebrated beauty, the Duchess of Devonshire, playing
with her infant daughter. A charming group is Lady Cockburn and her
Boys, which has been engraved under the title of the Roman matron
Cornelia and her Children. It is said of this splendid production, that
when it was brought into the Royal Academy exhibition to be hung, it was
greeted by the assembly of painters with a great demonstration of
applause. It is no wonder, then, that this should be one of the few
paintings to which the master attached his signature.

[Illustration: ANGEL HEADS.--REYNOLDS.]

Our list of Reynolds's pictures would be defective without some mention
of the famous Angel Heads, which is peculiarly a representative work. It
consists of a cluster of little cherubs, representing, in five different
expressions, the delicate features of a single face, whose original was
Miss Frances Isabella Gordon. Painted in 1786, near the close of his
great career, it seems to gather up into a harmonious whole those
several aspects of childhood which Sir Joshua's long and wide experience
had revealed to him as the typical movements of the child mind.

The five totally dissimilar expressions embody those varying attitudes
of mind which the child may successively assume in any critical
experience of its young life. The clear-cut profile of the lower face at
the left suggests the face of the child in the Age of Innocence who
first confronts the problem of life. The one just above has the
thoughtful poise of the little girl Simplicity, pondering over an
important question, while the remaining heads stand for those
imaginative and emotional moods which complete the cycle of human
experience.

The original of this beautiful picture[1] is in the National Gallery at
London, and fortunate indeed are they who have the privilege of standing
before it to delight their eyes with the blonde loveliness of the
swee