randmothers and great-grandmothers were strangely vilified
in their unpleasing likenesses. The somewhat loose satin evening-dress,
with the shepherdess's crook, was absurd enough; and no very great
improvement upon the earlier taste of complimenting portraits with the
personation of the heathen deities. The poetical pastoral, however, very
soon descended to the real pastoral; and, as if to make people what they
were not was considered enough of the historical of portrait, even this
took. We suspect Gainsborough was the first to sin in this degradation
line, by no means the better one for being the furthest from the
divinities. He had painted some rustic figures very admirably, and made
such subjects a fashion; but why they should ever be so, we could never
understand; or why royalty should not be represented as royalty, gentry
as gentry; to represent them otherwise, appears as absurd as if our
Landseer should attempt a greyhound in the character of a Newfoundland
dog. A picture of Gainsborough's was exhibited, a year or two ago, in
the British Institution, Pall-Mall, which we were astonished to hear was
most highly valued; for it was a weak, washy, dauby, ill-coloured
performance, and the design as bad as well could be. It was a scene
before a cottage-door, with the children of George the Third as peasant
children, in village dirt and mire. The picture had no merit to
recommend it; if we remember rightly, it had been painted over, or in
some way obscured, and unfortunately brought to light. Although Sir
Joshua Reynolds generally introduced a new grace into his portraits, and
mostly so without deviating from the character as he found it,
dispensing indeed with the old affectation, we fear he cannot altogether
be acquitted from the charge of deviating from the true propriety of
portrait. Ladies as Miranda, as Hebe, and even as Thais, no very moral
compliment, are examples--some there are of the lower pastoral. Mrs
Macklin and her daughter were represented at a spinning-wheel, and Miss
Potts as a gleaner. There is one of somewhat higher pretensions, but
equally a deviation from propriety, in his portraits of the Honourable
Mistresses Townshend, Beresford, and Gardiner. They are decorating the
statue of Hymen; the grace of one figure is too theatrical, the others
have but little. The one kneeling on the ground, and collecting the
flowers, is, in one respect, disagreeable--the light of the sky, too
much of the same hue and ton