genial
presence animated them with fresh hope. His chivalry was as unfailing
as his bravery. It is said that "his military skill and moral courage
place him among the best soldiers and noblest men Europe produced in
the eighteenth century."

The portrait painter makes us feel all this in his picture. The
attitude is so dignified, the gesture so forcible, the countenance so
expressive, that we are impressed at once with the dignity of his
character. Even if we knew nothing of his history we should still be
sure that this is a great man.

The last days of the hero of Gibraltar were spent at his home,
Kalkofen, near Aix-la-Chapelle, where he died, July 6, 1790, in the
seventy-third year of his age.

XI

MRS. PAYNE-GALLWEY AND HER CHILD (PICKABACK)

Pickaback is one of the old, old games which no one is so foolish as
to try to trace to its origin. We may well believe that there was
never a time when mothers did not trot their children on their knees
and carry them on their backs. The very names we give these childish
games were used in England more than a century ago.

The picture of Mrs. Payne-Gallwey and her child has long been known as
Pickaback, and will always be so called by many who would not be at
the pains to remember the lady's name. It is one of those portraits in
which the painter, impatient of the stiff conventional attitudes which
were in vogue in his day, drew his inspiration from a simple homely
theme of daily life.

What an ingenious painter Reynolds was, we learn more and more as we
examine one picture after another and compare them with those of his
predecessors. He liked to have his pictures tell stories, and often,
when he had a mother and child to paint, he represented them as
playing together just as they might have done every day in their own
nursery or garden.[14] The Duchess of Devonshire is seen in her
boudoir trotting her baby to Banbury Cross, and the Cockburn children
are surprised in a game of hide-and-seek on their mother's lap.

[Footnote 14: Claude Phillips refers to Pickaback as "one of the most
popular and representative" of this class.]

Mrs. Payne-Gallwey seems to have just caught her little girl up on her
back and to be starting off to give her a ride. Her body is bent
slightly forward in the attitude of one walking with a burden, and we
almost seem to see her move. It is as if in another moment they would
pass across the canvas and out of our sight.

The inciden