Gainsborough was the only painter of his day that could, with any pretension, vie with Sir Joshua Reynolds in portrait.  In some respects they had similar excellences.  Both were alike, by natural taste, averse to affectation, and both were colourists.  As a colourist, Gainsborough, as his pictures are now, may be even preferred to Reynolds.  They seem to have been painted off more at once, and have therefore a greater freshness; his flesh tints are truly surprising, most true to life.  He probably painted with a more simple palette.  The pains and labour which Sir Joshua bestowed, and which were perhaps very surprising when his pictures were fresh from the easel, have lost much of their virtue.  The great difference between these great cotemporaries lay in their power of character.  Gainsborough was as true as could be to nature, where the character was not of the very highest order.  Plain, downright common sense he would hit off wonderfully, as in his portrait of Ralphe Schomberg—­a picture, we are sorry to find, removed from the National Gallery.  The world’s every-day men were for his pencil.  He did not so much excel in women.  The bent of Sir Joshua’s mind was to elevate, to dignify, to intellectualize.  Enthusiasm, sentiment, purity, and all the varied poetry of feminine beauty, received their kindred hues and most exquisite expression under his hand.  Whatever was dignified in man, or lovely in woman, was portrayed with its appropriate grace and strength.  Sir Joshua was, in fact, himself the higher character; ever endeavouring to improve and cultivate his own mind, to raise it by a dignified aim in his art and in his life, and gathering the beauty of sentiment to himself from its best source—­the practice of social and every amiable charity—­he was sure to transfer to the canvass something characteristic of himself.  Gainsborough was, in his way, a gentle enthusiast, altogether of an humbler ambition.  Even in his landscapes, he showed that he saw little in nature but what the vulgar see; he had little idea that what is commonly seen are the materials of a better creation.  Gainsborough was unrivalled in his portraiture of common truth, Reynolds in poetical truth.  Gainsborough spoke in character in one of his letters, wherein he said, that he “was well read in the volume of nature, and that was learning sufficient for him.”  It is said that he was proud—­perhaps his pride was shown in this remark—­but it was not a pride allied with greatness.  The pride of Reynolds was quite of another stamp; it did not disagree with his soundest judgment; his estimate of himself was more true, and it showed itself in modesty.  That such men should meet and associate but little, is not surprising.  That Reynolds withdrew in “cold and carefully meted out courtesy,” is not surprising, though the expressions quoted are written to disparage Reynolds.  The man of fixed purpose may appear cold when he does not assimilate with the man of caprice, (as was Gainsborough,)