of celebrated personages of English history. I can only take
leave to disjoint, or to dislocate, or copy, a very few of his words,
and to apply them to the following scanty pages, as it must be
interesting to have exhibited before our eyes _our fathers as they
lived_, accompanied with such memorials of their lives and characters,
as enable us to compare their persons and countenances with their
sentiments:--portraits shewing us how "our ancestors looked, moved, and
dressed,"--as the pen informs us "how they thought, acted, lived and
died." One cannot help feeling kindness for the memories of those whose
writings have pleased us.[1]

What native of the county of Hereford, but must wish to see their
town-hall ornamented with a life-breathing portrait of Dr. Beale,
embodying, as it were, in the resemblance of the individual, (to use
the words of a most eloquent person on another occasion), "his spirit,
his feelings, and his character?" Or what elegant scholar but must wish
to view the resemblance of the almost unknown Thomas Whately, Esq., or
that of the Rev. William Gilpin, whose vivid pen (like that of the late
Sir Uvedale Price), has "realized painting," and enchained his readers
to the rich scenes of nature?

Dr. Johnson calls portrait painting "that art which is employed in
diffusing friendship, in reviving tenderness, in quickening the
affections of the absent, and continuing the presence of the dead."

The horticultural intercourse that now passes between England and
France, induces one to express a wish, that the portraits of many of
those delightful writers on this science, whose pens have adorned
France, (justly termed from its climate _la terre classique
d'horticulture_), were selected and engraved; for many of their
portraits have never yet been engraved. If this selection were
accompanied with a few brief notices of them and their works, it would
induce many in this country to peruse some of the most fascinating
productions that ever issued from the press. Amongst so many, whose
portraits and memoirs would interest us, I will mention those of
Champier, who distinguished himself at the battle of Aignadel, and who
published at Lyons, in 1533, Campus Elisius Galliae amenitate referens;
Charles Etienne, who, in 1529, produced his Praedium Rusticum; and who
with Leibault published the Maison Rustique, of which upwards of thirty
editions have been published, (and which our Gervase Markham calls _a
work of infinit