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 tone as the face, is but little separated from it—­in fact, only by the dark hair; while all below the face and bosom is a too heavy dark mass.  Portrait-painters are very apt to fail whenever they colour their back-grounds to the heads of a warm and light sky-colour; the force of the complexion is very apt to be lost, and the portrait is sure to lose its importance.  The “General on Horseback,” in our National Gallery, (Ligonier,) a fine picture, is in no small degree hurt by the absence of a little greyer tone in the part of the sky about the head.  By far the best portraits by Sir Joshua—­and, fortunately, they are the greater part—­are those in real character.  His very genius was for unaffected simplicity; attitudinizing recipes could never have been adopted by him with satisfaction to himself.  Some of his slight, more sketchy portraits, as yet unexperimented upon by his powerful, frequently rather too powerful, colouring, his deep browns and yellows, are unrivalled.  Such is his Kitty Fisher, not long since exhibited in the British Gallery, Pall-Mall.  There the character is not overpowered by the effect.