leiy, and that, as a foregone conclusion, the result is a delightful and rarely interesting exhibition.
Entering the West Gallery, one's attention is in- stantly attracted by Romney's life-size portrait of lovely Mrs. Jordan, an inconceivably fascinating example of this painter's best manner. Pose, colour, treatment, all are of the happiest. The actress, dressed in a white filmy gown, confined at the waist by a pale pinkish ribbon, turns, with her head leaning on her hand, and her elbow supported on her knee, her beautiful face almost full upon the beholder. Her blonde, waving hair floats around her delicately poised face and neck ; a charming espieglerie sweetens the fine malice of her smiling eyes and lips. It would be hard to say with which one is most impressed ; the fascination of the woman or the skill of the painter by whom she has been immortalised, and, in an instance where the artist has so obviously attained to his desired consummation, it would be a mere hC'dse to dissect the technical method through which he has reached it. A striking contrast to this example of the art that conceals art is a small portrait by the same hand, of Lady Hamilton as ' Miranda ' ; a canvas of but slight merit, wherein the hot shadows and coarse technique produce an impression of crudity and unrefinement.
Gainsborough's ' The Mall, in St. James's Park,' is a dull and vapid picture, devoid of solidity or truth, re- presenting a number of unsubstantial milliner's puppets trooping along an alley of woolly green trees, its faults perhaps being made more apparent by the immediate proximity of Sir Joshua Reynolds' fine portrait of Mrs. Morris, a subtly strong arrangement of dull reds and ivory. The pose is at the same time stately and graceful, the shadows pure and sober, the modelling adequate, the method of treatment, as is best, invisible. Etty's ' Corsair,' representing a too-brown pirate carrying off an unwilling damsel, is not a very pleas- ing picture ; it has a certain Byronic insincerity of feeling, although the half-nude figui-e of the girl is fine in drawing, and agreeable in its pearliness of colour. Her face, with its idiotic grin, is ridiculous. On the original merits of many of Turner's pictures it is by no means easy to pronounce, owing to the ephemeral qualities of some of his pigments ; but in the ' Avalanche in the Val d'Aosta ' one finds, to say the least of it, a prodigious sense of space and vast confusion — a Cyclopean chaos. This feeling of immensity, combined with the romance which only scientifically-selected truths can give, is carried to its highest point in Cotman's ' Homeward Bound.' A great ship in full sail moves slowly through the tum- bling, sombre-green water-. The sails are in tone against an after-sunset sky, and it is perhaps mainly to the justice of these two values that the impression of vastness and mysteiy is due. One could well ima- gine this to be the ship of the Ancient Mariner coming into port, or that of Vanderdecken, minus the blood-red sails. Anyhow, it remains in our memory as one of the finest marines we have ever seen. A little further along on the same wall hangs another Turner — ' Pope's Villa ' — a pastoral landscape and white house, golden and luminous in the light of the setting sun. In the foreground are figures and sheep, the disposition of which is admirable. Of the two VVilkies, 'Blind Man's Buff' and 'The Penny Wed- ding,' the former is the best. The scene is a Scots farm-kitchen, where a goodly gathering of men and maids disport themselves in the time-honoured pas- time whose name supplies the title for the picture. The grouping and action of the rustic figures is most graceful and apparently simple, while the colour is a splendid instance of those pure and mellow quali- ties, rich without (to use a slang term) jamminess, low in tone without grubbiness, delicate yet not sickly, to which Orchardson has approached perhaps more nearly than any other painter.
Crome's ' Gibraltar Watering-place,' though scarcely a characteristic example of his work, is noteworthy for a certain solid grandeur ; but the ' Woody Landscape with Sheep,' in the next room, is as fine a Crome, not even excepting the luminous pastoral at South Kensington, as we have had the good fortune to see. In spite of its comparatively unimportant size, one is impressed by this small canvas as if it were a large picture, so perfect is the arrangement of the masses, so beautiful the quiet dignity of colour. Returning to our conscientious (and yet agreeable) round in the West Gallery, we may note a charmingly simple portrait of a lady — name unknown — which, at the first glance, would seem to be a Reynolds, and a good one too ; but turning to the Catalogue, we find it to be by John Hoppner. The background of deftly-painted foliage, with low blue hills in the distance, might prove not unworthy of the attention of the contemporary por- traitist. ' Crossing the Brook,' with its combination of gorgeous colour and childlike grace, would bear, even were it a less-known picture, unmistakably the Rey- nolds stamp. We cannot entirely regard pictures such as this as ' signifying nothing ' but the more or less dexterous methods of laying on paint, although that point of view, when not carried to excess, has its due value. It is only when the intention of the artist and his technique are in harmony that the best results are gained, be the desired end an expression merely of certain effects of light and shade, or, on the other hand, of some human interest added thereto. Here the human interest is so unforced, so blended with a suitable mode of technical expression, as to form a necessary and delightful part of a perfectly-balanced whole. The grave, sweet anxiety, the quaint careful- ness shown in every line of the child's face and figure well exemplify this, as she carries a poodle-like dog across a shallow stream, with an air of confident, yet modest, assurance that is evidently not fully shared by the animal himself.
There are several good Morlands in this room ; one of the most pleasing is the ' Rustic Scene ' (No. 67), an interesting rendering of a glimpse at last-century
