faithful fellow formerly. Harley's father had taken him up an orphan, and saved him from being cast on the parish; and he had ever since remained in the service of him and of his son. Harley shook him by the hand as he passed, smiling, as if he had said: 'I will not weep.' He sprung hastily into the chaise that waited for him; Peter folded up the step. My dear master,' said he, shaking the solitary lock that hung on either side of his head, I have been told as how London is a sad place.' He was choked with the thought, and his benediction could not be heard. But it shall be heard, honest Peter ! where these tears will add to its energy.

In a few hours Harley reached the inn where he proposed breakfasting; but the fulness of his heart would not suffer him to eat a morsel. He walked out on the road, and gaining a little height, stood gazing on the quarter he had left. He looked for his wonted prospect, his fields, his woods, and his hills; they were lost in the distant clouds! He pencilled them on the clouds, and bade them farewell with a sigh!

He sat down on a large stone to take out a little pebble from his shoe, when he saw, at some distance, a beggar approaching him. He had on a loose sort of coat, mended with different-coloured rags, amongst which the blue and the russet were the predominant. He had a short knotty stick in his hand, and on the top of it was stuck a ram's horn; his knees (though he was no pilgrim) had worn the stuff of his breeches; he wore no shoes, and his stockings had entirely lost that part of them which should have covered his feet and ankles. In his face, however, was the plump appearance of good-humour: he walked a good round pace, and a crook-legged dog trotted at his heels.

'Our delicacies,' said Harley to himself, 'are fantastic: they are not in nature! that beggar walks over the sharpest of these stones barefooted, while I have lost the most delightful dream in the world from the smallest of them happening to get into my shoe.'-The beggar had by this time come up, and, pulling off a piece of hat, asked charity of Harley; the dog began to beg too :-it was impossible to resist both; and, in truth, the want of shoes and stockings had made both unnecessary, for Harley had destined sixpence for him before. The beggar, on receiving it, poured forth blessings without number; and, with a sort of smile on his countenance, said to Harley, that if he wanted his fortune told' Harley turned his eye briskly on the beggar: it was an unpromising look for the subject of a prediction, and silenced the prophet immediately. I would much rather learn,' said Harley, 'what it is in your power to tell me your trade must be an entertaining one sit down on this stone, and let me know something of your profession; I have often thought of turning fortune-teller for a week or two myself.'

'Master,' replied the beggar, 'I like your frankness much; God knows I had the humour of plain dealing in me from a child; but there is no doing with it in this world; we must live as we can, and lying is, as you call it, my profession: but I was in some sort forced to the trade, for I dealt once in telling truth.

'I was a labourer, sir, and gained as much as to make me live: I never laid by, indeed; for I was reckoned a piece of a wag, and your wags, I take it, are seldom rich, Mr Harley.' 'So,' said Harley, 'you seem to know me.' 'Ay, there are few folks in the county that I don't know something of; how should I tell fortunes else?'

'True; but to go on with your story: you were a labourer, you say, and a wag; your industry, I suppose, you left with your old trade; but your humour you preserve to be of use to you in your new.'

'What signifies sadness, sir? a man grows lean on't; but I was brought to my idleness by degrees; first I could not work, and it went against my stomach to work ever after. I was seized with a jail-fever at the time of the assizes being in the county where I lived; for I was always curious to get acquainted with the felons, because they are commonly fellows of much mirth and little thought, qualities I had ever an esteem for. In the height of this fever, Mr Harley, the house where I lay took fire, and burnt to the ground; I was carried out in that condition, and lay all the rest of my illness in a barn. I got the better of my disease, however, but I was so weak that I spat blood whenever I attempted to work. I had no relation living that I knew of, and I never kept a friend above a week when I was able to joke; I seldom remained above six months in a parish, so that I might have died before I had found a settlement in any : thus I was forced to beg my bread, and a sorry trade 1 found it, Mr Harley. I told all my misfortunes truly, but they were seldom believed; and the few who gave me a halfpenny as they passed, did it with a shake of the head, and an injunction not to trouble them with a long story. In short, I found that people do not care to give alms without some security for their money; a wooden leg or a withered arm is a sort of draft upon Heaven for those who choose to have their money placed to account there; so I changed my plan, and, instead of telling my own misfortunes, began to prophesy happiness to others. This I found by much the better way: folks will always listen when the tale is their own; and of many who say they do not believe in fortune-telling, I have known few on whom it had not a very sensible effect. I pick up the names of their acquaintance; amours and little squabbles are easily gleaned among servants and neighbours; and indeed people themselves are the best intelligencers in the world for our purpose; they dare not puzzle us for their own sakes, for every one is anxious to hear what they wish to believe; and they who repeat it, to laugh at it when they have done, are generally more serious than their hearers are apt to imagine. With a tolerable good memory and some share of cunning; with the help of walking a-nights over heaths and churchyards; with this, and shewing the tricks of that there dog, whom I stole from the sergeant of a marching regiment (and, by the way, he can steal too upon occa sion), I make shift to pick up a livelihood. My trade, indeed, is none of the honestest; yet people are not much cheated neither, who give a few halfpence for a prospect of happiness, which I have heard some persons say is all a man can arrive at in this world.-But I must bid you good-day, sir; for I have three miles to walk before noon, to inform some boarding-school young ladies whether their husbands are to be peers of the realm or captains in the army; a question which I promised to answer them by that time.'

Harley had drawn a shilling from his pocket: but Virtue bade him consider on whom he was going to bestow it.-Virtue held back his arm :n:-but a milder form, a younger sister of Virtue's, not so severe as Virtue, nor so serious as Pity, smiled upon him: his fingers lost their compression;-nor did Virtue offer to catch the money as it fell. It had no sooner reached the ground,

than the watchful cur (a trick he had been taught) snapped it up, and, contrary to the most approved method of stewardship, delivered it immediately into the hands of his master. (From The Man of Feeling.)

Robert Burns.

I know not if I shall be accused of such enthusiasm and partiality, when I introduce to the notice of my readers a poet of our own country, with whose writings I have lately become acquainted; but if I am not greatly deceived, I think I may safely pronounce him a genius of no ordinary rank. The person to whom I allude is Robert Burns, an Ayrshire ploughman, whose poems were some time ago published in a county town in the west of Scotland, with no other ambition, it would seem, than to circulate among the inhabitants of the county where he was born, to obtain a little fame from those who had heard of his talents. I hope I shall not be thought to assume too much if I endeavour to place him in a higher point of view, to call for a verdict of his country on the merit of his works, and to claim for him those honours which their excellence appears to deserve.

In mentioning the circumstance of his humble station, I mean not to rest his pretensions solely on that title, or to urge the merits of his poetry when considered in relation to the lowness of his birth, and the little opportunity of improvement which his education could afford. These particulars, indeed, might excite our wonder at his productions; but his poetry, considered abstractedly, and without the apologies arising from his situation, seems to me fully entitled to command our feelings, and to obtain our applause. One bar, indeed, his birth and education have opposed to his fame,—the language in which most of his poems are written. Even in Scotland, the provincial dialect which Ramsay and he have used is now read with a difficulty which greatly damps the pleasure of the reader in England it cannot be read at all, without such a constant reference to a glossary as nearly to destroy that pleasure. [Here Mackenzie quotes a long extract from the 'Vision' and the whole of the 'Mountain Daisy.]

The power of genius is not less admirable in tracing the manners than in painting the passions, or in drawing the scenery of nature. That intuitive glance with which a writer like Shakespeare discerns the characters of men, with which he catches the many changing hues of life, forms a sort of problem in the science of mind, of which it is easier to see the truth than to assign the cause. Though I am very far from meaning to compare our rustic bard to Shakespeare, yet whoever will read his lighter and more humorous poems, his Dialogue of the Dogs, his Dedication to G H- Esq., his Epistles to a Young Friend, and to W. S -n, will perceive with what uncommon penetration and sagacity this heaven-taught ploughman, from his humble and unlettered station, has looked upon men and manners. Against some passages of those last-mentioned poems, it has been objected that they breathe a spirit of libertinism and irreligion. But if we consider the ignorance and fanaticism of the lower class of people in the country where these poems were written, a fanaticism of that pernicious sort which sets faith in opposition to good works, the fallacy and danger of which a mind so enlightened as our poet's could not but perceive, we shall not look upon his lighter muse as the enemy of religion, (of which in several places he expresses the justest sentiments,) though she has some

times been a little unguarded in her ridicule of hypocrisy. In this as in other respects it must be allowed that there are exceptionable parts of the volume he has given to the public, which caution would have suppressed, or correction struck out; but poets are seldom cautious, and our poet had, alas! no friends or companions from whom correction could be obtained. When we reflect on his rank in life, the habits to which he must have been subject, and the society in which he must have mixed, we regret perhaps more than wonder that delicacy should be so often offended in perusing a volume in which there is so much to interest and to please us.

Burns possesses the spirit as well as the fancy of a poet. That honest pride and independence of soul which are sometimes the muse's only dower, break forth on every occasion in his works. It may be, then, I shall wrong his feelings while I indulge my own, in calling the attention of the public to his situation and circumstances. That condition, humble as it was, in which he found content and wooed the muse might not have been deemed uncomfortable; but grief and misfortunes have reached him there; and one or two of his poems hint, what I have learnt from some of his countrymen, that he has been obliged to form the resolution of leaving his native land, to seek under a West-Indian clime that shelter and support which Scotland has denied him. But I trust means may be found to prevent this resolution from taking place; and that I do my country no more than justice when I suppose her ready to stretch out her hand to cherish and retain this native poet, whose wood-notes wild' possess so much excellence. To repair the wrongs of suffering or neglected merit; to call forth genius from the obscurity in which it had pined indignant, and place it where it may profit or delight the world; these are exertions which give to wealth an enviable superiority, to greatness and to patronage a laudable pride. (From The Lounger, 9th Dec. 1786.)

See Robert Chambers's Eminent Scotsmen (1834); H. G. Graham's Scottish Men of Letters in the Eighteenth Century (1902).

Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), a great chemist, an original and unorthodox theologian, and a Radical and unpopular political thinker, was born, a cloth-dresser's son, at Fieldhead in Birstall parish, near Leeds, 13th March 1733, and was carefully trained in the Westminster Assembly's Shorter Catechism by his pious mother. He learnt French and High Dutch enough to translate and write business letters in both languages for an uncle. After four years at a Dissenting academy at Daventry, in 1755 he became Presbyterian minister at Needham Market, and wrote The Scripture Doctrine of Remission, denying that Christ's death was a sacrifice, and rejecting the Trinity and Atonement. In 1758 he removed to Nantwich, where he ministered to a small congregation; several 'travelling Scotchmen' or pedlars who frequented the place he found to his surprise were none of them at all Calvinistical. Priestley became a tutor at Warrington Academy in 1761. In yearly visits to London he met Franklin, who supplied him with books for his History of Electricity (1767). In 1764 he was made LL.D. of Edinburgh, and in 1766 F.R.S. In 1767 he became

minister of a chapel at Mill Hill, Leeds, where he took up the study of chemistry. In 1774, as literary companion, he accompanied Lord Shelburne on a Continental tour, and published Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever. But at home he was branded as an atheist in spite of his Disquisition relating to Matter and Spirit (1777), affirming from revelation our hope of resurrection. He was elected to the French Academy of Sciences in 1772, and to the St Petersburg Academy in 1780, and in 1780 too he became minister of a chapel at Birmingham. His History of the Corruptions of Christianity (1782) and his History of Early Opinions concerning Jesus Christ (1786) occasioned renewed controversy. His reply to Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution secured him formal citizenship of the republic and election to the convention as deputy for Orne; an earlier and more important consequence for him was that it led a Birmingham mob first to wreck his chapel, and then break into his house and destroy its contents (1791). He now settled as a Unitarian minister and successor to Dr Price at Hackney, but in 1794 removed to America, where he was heartily received, and became a more convinced Republican and a more pronounced Unitarian; finally at Northumberland, in Pennsylvania, he died, believing himself to hold the doctrines of the primitive Christians, and looking for the second coming of Christ. Priestley is justly called the father of the newer or pneumatic chemistry (as opposed to the phlogiston theory which his discoveries exploded); good authorities (see Nature, xlii. 1890) defend the priority of his discovery of oxygen (1774) and of the composition of water (1781), and deny Lavoisier's claim to be considered an independent discoverer. It was Priestley, not Bentham, who first coined the phrase 'The greatest happiness of the greatest number;' and the sentiment from the Corruptions of Christianity is characteristic: 'As the greatest things often take rise from the smallest beginnings, so the worst things sometimes proceed from good intentions.'

The following paragraphs are from Priestley's autobiographical Memoirs, the first extract having been written at Birmingham in 1787, the second in 1795, after he had settled in the United States:

I esteem it a singular happiness to have lived in an age and country in which I have been at full liberty both to investigate, and by preaching and writing to propagate, religious truth; that though the freedom I have used for this purpose was for some time disadvantageous to me, it was not so long, and that my present situation is such that I can with the greatest openness urge whatever appears to me to be the truth of the gospel, not only without giving the least offence, but with the entire approbation of those with whom I am particularly connected. As to the dislike which I have drawn upon myself by my writings, whether that of the Calvinistic party in or out of the church of England, those who rank with rational dissenters (but who have been exceedingly offended at my carrying my inquiries farther than they wished any person to do), or whether they be unbelievers,

About two years before I left Birmingham the question about the test act was much agitated both in and out of parliament. This, however, was altogether without any concurrence of mine. I only delivered, and published, a sermon on the 5th of November 1789, recommending the most peaceable method of pursuing our object. Mr Madan, however, the most respectable clergyman in the town, preaching and publishing a most inflammatory sermon on the subject, inveighing in the bitterest manner against the Dissenters in general, and myself in particular, I addressed a number of familiar letters to the inhabitants of Birmingham in our defence. duced a reply from him, and other letters from me. mine were written in an ironical and rather a pleasant manner, and in some of the last of them I introduced a farther reply to Mr Burn, another clergyman in Birmingham, who had addressed to me letters on the infallibility of the testimony of the Apostles concerning the person of Christ, after replying to his first set of Letters, in a separate publication.

This pro

All

From these small pieces I was far from expecting any serious consequences. But the Dissenters in general being very obnoxious to the court, and it being imagined, though without any reason, that I had been the chief promoter of the measures which gave them offence, the clergy, not only in Birmingham, but through all England, seemed to make it their business, by writing in the public papers, by preaching, and other methods, to inflame the minds of the people against me. And on occasion of the celebration of the anniversary of the French revolution on July 14th, 1791, by several of my friends, but with which I had little to do, a mob encouraged by some persons in power, first burned the meeting house in which I preached, then another meeting house in the town, and then my dwelling house, demolishing my library, apparatus, and, as far as they could, every thing belonging to me. They also burned, or much damaged, the houses of many Dissenters, chiefly my friends; the particulars of which I need not recite, as they will be found in two Appeals which I published on the subject written presently after the riots.

Being in some personal danger on this occasion, I went to London; and so violent was the spirit of party which then prevailed, that I believe I could hardly have been safe in any other place. There, however, I was perfectly so, though I continued to be an object of troublesome attention until I left the country altogether. It shewed no small degree of courage and friendship in Mr William Vaughan to receive me into his house, and also in Mr Salte, with whom I spent a month at Tottenham. But it shewed more in Dr Price's congregation at Hackney, to invite me to succeed him, which they did, though not unanimously, some time after my arrival in London.

In this situation I found myself as happy as I had been at Birmingham, and contrary to general expecta tion, I opened my lectures to young persons with great success, being attended by many from London; and though I lost some of the hearers, I left the congregation in a better situation than that in which I found it.

On the whole, I spent my time even more happily at Hackney than ever I had done before; having every advantage for my philosophical and theological studies, in some respects superior to what I had enjoyed at Birmingham, especially from my easy access to Mr Lindsey, and my frequent intercourse with Mr Belsham, professor of divinity in the New College, near which I lived. Never, on this side the grave, do I expect to enjoy myself so much as I did by the fire side of Mr Lindsey, conversing with him and Mrs Lindsey on theological and other subjects, or in my frequent walks with Mr Belsham, whose views of most important subjects were, like Mr Lindsey's, the same with my own.

I found, however, my society much restricted with respect to my philosophical acquaintance; most of the members of the Royal Society shunning me on account of my religious or political opinions, so that I at length withdrew myself from them, and gave my reasons for so doing in the Preface to my Observations and Experiments on the generation of air from water, which I published at Hackney. For, with the assistance of my friends, I had in a great measure replaced my Apparatus, and had resumed my experiments, though after the loss of near two years.

See Rutt's edition of Priestley's Works (1831-32), including the autobiographical Memoirs; and Martineau's Essays (vol. i. 1891).

Jean Louis De Lolme (1740-1806) was somewhat inaptly called by Isaac D'Israeli 'the English Montesquieu.' For, born at Geneva, he was an advocate at home, and did not come to England till 1769; and there, in spite of his literary activity, he lived in great poverty, always in debt and repeatedly in prison. Having inherited a small property, he returned to Geneva in 1775. And the work by which he earned his sobriquet, though Englished-by another hand, apparently, in 1775, as The Constitution of England-was written in French, and published at Amsterdam (1771). The translation, which flattered England, reached a tenth edition (with Life, 1853). The work shed no new light on English history: the theory that the excellence of the English constitution depends on the beautiful equilibrium of the several departments or institutions has been not unjustly described as an expanded paraphrase of a single chapter of Montesquieu; and though for nearly a century it remained an authority for lack of better, it has long been superseded by works based on real historical research, and on scholarly and scientific study of records and original documents. In 1772 there had been published anonymously A Parallel between the English Constitution and the former Government of Sweden, mainly an unauthorised translation of part of the Constitution. A History of the Flagellants and Strictures on the Union were two of his half-dozen books and political pamphlets. A quotation from De Lolme in the preface to the 'Junius' letters in 1771 (before any translation had appeared) led the musical-literary Dr Thomas Busby to argue, incredibly enough, that De Lolme was concealed under that terrible nom de guerre.

Robert Orme (1728-1801), historian of India, was born in Travancore, the son of an army doctor in the East India Company's service; was educated at Harrow; and from 1743 till 1758 was himself in the employment of the Company, at first as writer, and ultimately as commissary and accountantgeneral. His health failing, he settled in London in 1760, and wrote his History of the Military Transactions of the British Nation in Indostan from the Year 1745 (1763-78), a work which furnished the favourite reading of Colonel Newcome, and was praised by Macaulay as one of the most authentic and best-written in the English tongue, though tedious from its minute details. Even now some prefer to Macaulay's, for their old-fashioned stateliness and vigour, Orme's account of Bengal, his version of the Black Hole tragedy, and his description of the battle of Plassey. In 1782 he published Historical Fragments of the Mogul Empire, of the Morattoes, and of the English Concerns in Indostan.

The Black Hole of Calcutta.

[The Nawab of Bengal, Siráj-ud-Daula (Suraja Dowlah), having captured the fort of the Calcutta factory, caused all the prisoners, 146 in number, to be crowded into one small apartment 18 feet square.] In the mean time every minute had increased their sufferings. The first effect of their sufferings was a profuse and continued sweat, which soon produced intolerable thirst, succeeded by excruciating pains in the breast, with difficulty of breathing-little short of suffocation. . . . Attempts were again made to force the door, which, failing as before, redoubled their rage: but the thirst increasing, nothing but water! water! became soon after the general cry. The good Jemautdar immediately ordered some skins of water to be brought to the windows; but, instead of relief, his benevolence became a more dreadful cause of destruction; for the sight of the water threw every one into such excessive agitations and ravings, that, unable to resist this violent impulse of nature, none could wait to be regularly served, but each with the utmost ferocity battled against those who were likely to get it from him; and in these conflicts many were either pressed to death by the efforts of others, or suffocated by their own. This scene, instead of producing compassion in the guard without, only excited their mirth; and they held up lights to the bars, in order to have the diabolical satisfaction of seeing the deplorable contentions of the sufferers within, who, finding it impossible to get any water whilst it was thus furiously disputed, at length suffered those who were nearest to the windows, to convey it in their hats to those behind them. It proved no relief either to their thirst or other sufferings; for the fever increased every moment with the increasing depravity of the air in the dungeon, which had been so often respired, and was saturated with the hot and deleterious effluvia of putrefying bodies, of which the stench was little less than mortal. Before midnight, all who were alive and had not partaken of the air at the windows, were either in a lethargic stupefaction or raving with delirium. Every kind of invective and abuse was uttered, in hopes of provoking the guard to put an end to their miseries, by firing into the dungeon; and whilst some were blaspheming their Creator with the frantic execrations of

torment in despair, heaven was implored by others with wild and incoherent prayers; until the weaker, exhausted by these agitations, at length laid down quietly, and expired on the bodies of their dead or agonizing friends. Those who still survived in the inward part of the dungeon, finding that the water had afforded them no relief, made a last effort to obtain air, by endeavouring to scramble over the heads of those who stood between them and the windows; where the utmost strength of every one was employed for two hours, either in maintaining his own ground, or in endeavouring to get that of which others were in possession. All regards of compassion and affection were lost, and no one would recede or give way for the relief of another. Faintness sometimes gave short pauses of quiet, but the first motion of any one renewed the struggle through all, under which ever and anon some one sunk to rise no more. At two o'clock not more than fifty remained alive. But even this number were too many to partake of the saving air, the contest for which, and life, continued until the morn, long implored, began to break; and, with the hope of relief, gave the few survivors a view of the dead. The survivors then at the window, finding that their intreaties could not prevail on the guard to open the door, it occurred to Mr Cooke, the secretary of the council, that Mr Holwell, if alive, might have more influence to obtain their relief; and two of the company undertaking the search, discovered him, having still some signs of life; but when they brought him towards the window, every one refused to quit his place, excepting Captain Mills, who with rare generosity offered to resign his; on which the rest likewise agreed to make room. He had scarcely begun to recover his senses, before an officer, sent by the Nabob, came and enquired if the English chief survived; and soon after the same man returned with an order to open the prison. The dead were so thronged, and the survivors had so little strength remaining, that they were employed near half an hour in removing the bodies which lay against the door, before they could clear a passage to go out one at a time; when of one hundred and forty-six who went in, no more than twenty-three came out alive, the ghastliest forms that ever were seen.

Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92) was indisputably one of the great painters of the world as well as greatest of English portrait painters; and he holds a place in literature in virtue of his Discourses on Painting, which, though probably revised and touched up by Johnson, Burke, and other friends, reflects Reynolds's own experience and opinion in an admirable style which is mainly his own. According to Mr Monkhouse, his advice to students is permanently valuable, and if we make allowance for the time, his criticisms on pictures and painters are substantially sound. His literary education Reynolds received mainly at his father's grammar-school, his father being a clergyman and schoolmaster at Plympton Earls near Plymouth. Art he studied in London and in Rome, whence he returned in 1752 to rise rapidly to full fame in London. It was he who founded in 1764 that famous literary club of which Johnson, Burke, Goldsmith, and the rest of the famous circle were members. He was elected president of the Royal Academy on its institution in 1768, and from

1769 (when he was knighted) to 1790 he delivered to the students of the Academy the famous fifteen lectures on the principles and practice of painting. In the fourteenth he pays a generous tribute to Gainsborough. His paper on art in the Idler, his annotations to Du Fresnoy's Art of Painting, and his Notes on the Art of the Low Countries all show a cultivated literary style. The extracts are from the first of the Discourses.

Genius and Labour.

It is indisputably evident that a great part of every man's life must be employed in collecting materials for the exercise of Genius. Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory: nothing can come of nothing: he who has laid up no materials can produce no combinations. A Student unacquainted with the attempts of former adventurers is always apt to over-rate his own abilities; to mistake the most trifling excursions for discoveries of moment, and every coast new to him, for a new-found country. If by chance he passes beyond his usual limits, he congratu lates his own arrival at those regions which they who have steer'd a better course have long left behind them. The productions of such minds are seldom distinguished by an air of originality: they are anticipated in their happiest efforts; and if they are found to differ in any thing from their predecessors, it is only in irregular sallies and trifling conceits. The more extensive therefore your acquaintance is with the works of those who have excelled, the more extensive will be your powers of invention; and what may appear still more like a paradox, the more original will be your conceptions. But the difficulty on this occasion is to determine who ought to be proposed as models of excellence, and who ought to be considered as the properest guides.

On whom then can he rely, or who shall show him the path that leads to excellence? The answer is obvious: Those great masters who have travelled the same road with success are the most likely to conduct others. The works of those who have stood the test of ages have a claim to that respect and veneration to which no modern can pretend. The duration and stability of their fame is sufficient to evince that it has not been suspended upon the slender thread of fashion and caprice, but bound to the human heart by every tye of sympathetic approbation. There is no danger of studying too much the works of those great men; but how they may be studied to advantage is an enquiry of great importance.

Some who have never raised their minds to the consideration of the real dignity of the Art, and who rate the works of an Artist in proportion as they excel or are defective in the mechanical parts, look on Theory as something that may enable them to talk but not to paint better; and confining themselves entirely to mechanical practice, very assiduously toil on in the drudgery of copying; and think they make a rapid progress while they faithfully exhibit the minutest part of a favourite picture. This appears to me a very tedious, and I think a very erroneous method of proceeding. Of every large composition, even of those which are most admired, a great part may be truly said to be common-place. This, though it takes up much time in copying, conduces little to improvement. I consider general copying as a delusive kind of industry; the Student satisfies himself with