n_ and in the
fashion, since it is undeniable that many are over fifty years, and some
several centuries behind the times!

It is to be hoped that these parsimonious Misters will soon recognise
that it is not possible for modern up-to-date Art to be florescent under
this retrograde and fossilized system, and be warned that such
untradesmanlike goings-on will deservedly forfeit the confidence and
patronage of their most fastidious customers.

Miss JESSIMINA remarked more than once that such and such a picture was
not in _her_ taste and she would never have chosen it personally, while
Miss PRIMMETT declared that she would not have had her likeness taken by
Hon'ble Sir JOSH GAINSBORO, or Misters VELASKY and VANDICK, not even if
they implored her on their bended marrowbones, and that, as for a
certain individual effeminately named ETTY, it was a wonderment to her
how respectable people could stand in front of such brazen performances!
These remarks are trivial, perhaps, but even straws will serve as cocks
of the weather on occasions, and, moreover, I shall certify that the
most general tone was of a critical and disapproving severity, and it
was quite evident that the greater portion of the spectators could have
done the job better themselves.

A certain Mister TURNER came in for the BENJAMIN'S mess of obloquy,
having represented Pluto, the god of wealth, in the act of carrying off
a female Proserpine, but the figures so Lilliputian, and in such a
disproportionate expansion of confused sceneries, that the elopement
produced but a very paltry impression. The slipshod carelessness of this
painter may be realised from the fact that in a composition styled
"_Blue Lights to Warn Steamboats off Shoal Water_," the blue lights are
conspicuous by their total absence, and the mistiness of the
atmospherical conditions renders it difficult to distinguish either the
steamers or the shoals with even tolerable accuracy!

In the ulterior room were sundry productions from Umbrian and Milanese
and other schools, such being presumptively the teaching establishments
over which Hon'ble REYNOLDS and TURNER and GREUZY and Co. predominated
as Old Masters. But surely it is unfair, and like seething a kid in the
maternal nutriment, to class such crude and hobbardyhoy performances
with works by more senile hands!

Here I observed a painting to illustrate scenes in the life of an
important celebrity, who was childishly represented many times over