hint, as he did many others of the kind, from Vandyck, and gave apt backgrounds to his figures:  between these painters no one did much, or even well in the pathetic part of the achievement.  Since Reynolds, none have approached him in success.  It will be understood that the object of these remarks is not to suggest for the reader’s consideration who painted the best landscape backgrounds as landscapes, but who most happily adapted them to his more important themes.  We believe Reynolds did so, and will conclude our remarks by another example.  The landscape in the distance of The Age of Innocence is as thoroughly in keeping with the subject as it can be:  thus here are fields easy to traverse, a few village elms, and just seen above their tops the summits of habitations,—­the hint is thus given that the child, all innocent as she is, has not gone far from home, or out of sight of the household to which she belongs....

[Illustration:  PORTRAIT OF LADY COCKBURN AND HER CHILDREN.
        Reynolds.]

It has been alleged that Reynolds never, or rarely painted the landscape backgrounds to his pictures, and that they were the work of Peter Toms, R.A., one of his ablest assistants, or of others who were more potent with that branch of Art than the President himself....  It is hard to deny to the mind which conceived the ruling idea of such pictures that honour which is assuredly due to some one, and to whom more probably than to the painter of the faces and designer of the attitudes, which are in such perfect harmony with the subordinate elements about them as to be completed only when the alliance is made.  Without this alliance, this harmony of parts, half the significance of many of Reynolds’s pictures is obscured.  When we have noted this the result is at least instructive, if not convincing, that one mind designed, if one hand did not invariably execute, the whole of any important portrait by our subject.

Our own belief is, that whenever the landscapes or other accessories of his productions are essential to the idea expressed by the work as a whole, then undoubtedly Reynolds wrought these minor parts almost wholly, if not entirely, with his own brushes.

Few, if any, of Reynolds’s family groups equals in beauty, variety, and spirit, the famous Cornelia and her Children, or rather Lady Cockburn and her three Infants,—­a work so charming, that we can well conceive the feelings of the Royal Academicians of 1774, that long-past time, when it was brought to be hung in the Exhibition, and received with clapping of hands, as men applaud a successful musical performance, or the fine reading of a poem.  Every Royal Academician then present—­the scene must have been a very curious one—­stepped forward, and in this manner saluted the work of the President; they did so, not because it was his, but on account of its charming qualities.  Conceive the painters, each in his swallow-tailed coat, his