John Singleton Copley's _Children of Francis
Sitwell, Esq._, at Renishaw; and lastly Zoffany's _Family Party_, at
Panshanger.

For life-like representation of the English people we look to Hogarth
and Morland, and yet nothing could be more different than the motives
which inspired the two, and the way they went to work upon their
subject. Hogarth was above all things theatrical, Morland natural.
Hogarth first conceived his idea, then laid his scene, and lastly
peopled it with actual characters as they appeared--individually--before
him. Morland simply looked about him and painted what he happened to see
at the precise moment when what he saw coincided with his natural
inclination, or we may even say inspiration, to paint it. It was much
the same difference as between the work of Zola and that of Thomas
Hardy. The one had a moral to preach, the other a story to tell.

* * * * *

When the most we hear of GEORGE ROMNEY nowadays is the price that has
been paid for one of his portraits at Christie's, it is refreshing as
well as informative to turn to the criticism of one of his greatest
though not in these times so highly priced contemporaries, I mean John
Flaxman. "When Romney first began to paint," he writes, "he had seen no
gallery of pictures nor the fine productions of ancient sculpture; but
then women and children were his statues, and all objects under the
canopy of heaven formed his school of painting. The rainbow, the purple
distance, or the silver lake, taught him colouring; the various actions
and passions of the human figure, with the forms of clouds, woods, and
mountains or valleys, afforded him studies of composition. Indeed, his
genius bore a strong resemblance to the scenes he was born in; like
them, it partook of the grand and beautiful; and like them also, the
bright sunshine and enchanting prospects of his fancy were occasionally
overspread with mist and gloom. On his arrival in Italy he was witness
to new scenes of art and sources of study of which he could only have
supposed previously that something

[Illustration: PLATE XLII.--GEORGE ROMNEY

THE PARSON'S DAUGHTER

_National Gallery, London_]

of the kind might exist; for he there contemplated the purity and
perfection of ancient sculpture, the sublimity of Michelangelo's Sistine
Chapel, and the simplicity of Cimabue and Giotto's schools. He perceived
those qualities distinctly, and judiciously used them in viewin