Waterloo. To those who love such fruitless mental sports it may prove no idle speculation to ponder what would have happened had Henry's amorous desires not led him to liberate himself and his nation from the bosom of the Catholic Church. Enough that the facts are there, and that with the first ardour of Protestant zeal there also made itself felt a chilling influence, casting a blight over literature and art, and more especially over art, till then so almost exclusively the handmaiden of religion, that a work of art came to be regarded as a symbol and remembrance of popery, and "painting and sculpture were conscientiously discouraged as tending to encourage idolatry and superstition and to minister to passion and luxury." Queen Mary, Elizabeth, and James I., each in their way gave some encouragement to foreign artists, such as Moro, Zucchero, and Mytens, but their patronage was purely personal, and did not operate upon the taste of the nation. More extended influence was exercised by Charles I. This monarch had a real love and understanding for art, and under him Rubens and Vandyke employed their pencils. He also bought many pictures, and encouraged his nobles to do the like. At least, among the upper classes the narrow Puritan art views were greatly counteracted. But Charles had to lay his head upon the block, and Puritanism had fuller and more unchecked sway than ever before, creating influences which to this very day are not wholly extinct, though happily in their death throes. Their latest survival is the "British Matron" who writes to the Times denouncing modern pictures that displease her individual taste, and the artists, happily rare and few, who preach that the study of the nude and anatomy is no essential part of a painter's education.

After the death of Charles a general wreck of works of art ensued. Whatever survived the bigotry of the Puritans was sacrificed to supply their pecuniary necessities. A curious mixture of superstition and covetousness was displayed. The journals of the House of Commons of 1645 afford some interesting reading like the following :-"Ordered: that all pictures and sketches as are without superstition shall be forthwith

sold for the benefit of Ireland and the north. Ordered: that all such pictures as have the representation of the Virgin Mary upon them shall be forthwith burnt. Ordered that all such pictures as have the representation of the Second Person of the Trinity upon them shall be forthwith burnt." It seems, however, that these orders were not quite strictly executed. The Puritan conscience having been relieved by this edict, many prohibited pictures were sold at a high price to swell the coffers of the zealots. After this it is needless to remark that art did not flourish under the Commonwealth. With the Restoration we find Lely practising his method of portrait-painting, succeeded by Sir Godfrey Kneller, neither, however, being Englishmen. The era of George I. produced as native painters, Richardson and Sir James Thornhill; under George II. Hudson flourished; it was reserved to the long reign of George III. to see the birth of what can be truly termed art, of what alone can measure itself with the nations of the Continent. Hogarth was the first upon the list, but Hogarth, inimitable as he is, was rather a satirist than an artist in the full acceptation of the term. Of beauty of draughtmanship, of colour, we find next to nothing in his canvasses. Together with him flourished Hudson, and a little later Wilson and Gainsborough, who, like himself, and, indeed, like all English artists up to that time, had imbibed their teaching through the medium of Flanders, producing exact and careful work—indeed, in Gainsborough's case, work of real beauty—but lacking on the side of poetical feeling and elevation. Such a method must be regarded as the infancy of art, its purely observant but unthinking side. It was reserved to Reynolds to open out to English understanding the vista of Italian art, with its glories, its perfections, and it is owing to his Discourses, even more than to his works, that this mighty revolution came about; a revolution so mighty, so important, that for its sake alone, had he never limned a canvas, the name of Reynolds should stand forth proudly in the annals of England. It was he who, coming to Italy, already in mature manhood, as a finished artist in the eyes of his countrymen, had the perception and the courage to

admit before the works of Raphael and Michael Angelo that it was needful for him "to become as a little child" and recommence his studies upon principles of which hitherto he was ignorant.

Joshua Reynolds was born at Plympton, in Devonshire, July 16th, 1723, the tenth child of the Rev. Samuel Reynolds, rector of Plympton and principal of the local grammar school. His father was the boy's only instructor. He had destined him, it would seem, for the medical profession, and Reynolds is known to have said in latter life that if this design had been carried out, "he should have felt the same determination to become the most eminent physician as he then felt to be the first painter of his age and country." It was, indeed, his decided opinion (an opinion modern psychology would hardly endorse) that "the superiority attainable in any pursuit whatever does not originate in an innate propensity of the mind for that pursuit in particular, but depends on the general strength of the intellect, and on the intense and constant application of that strength to a specific purpose." He held that ambition was the cause of eminence, but that accident pointed out the means. It is impossible to decide whether or no Reynolds illustrates his own theory, but from what he said in private, and also in his Discourses, many erroneous conclusions are drawn as to this point. As his biographer, Northcote, justly observes, Reynolds "never meant to deny the existence of genius, supposing the term to denote a greater degree of natural capacity in some minds than others; but he always contended strenuously against the vulgar and absurd interpretation of the word, which supposes that the same person may be a man of genius in one respect, but utterly unfit for, and almost an idiot in everything else; and that this singular and unaccountable faculty is a gift born with us, which does not need the assistance of pains or culture, time or accident, to improve and perfect it."

Whatever Reynolds' private views on the subject of native taste asserting itself in the young, he himself undoubtedly showed a liking for art at an early age, and his taste was

fostered by his father, himself an amateur possessing a small collection of anatomical and other prints. If Joshua's love of drawing did not interfere with his other studies, his father did not check it. Thus there is extant to this day a perspective drawing of a bookcase under which Mr. Reynolds has written, "Done by Joshua out of pure idleness." It is on the back of a Latin exercise. He copied such prints as he could find in his father's library, Jacob Cats's Book of Emblems furnishing him with the richest store. This his grandmother, who was a native of Holland, had contributed to the family bookshelves. When he was only eight years old he read with eagerness The Jesuit's Perspective, and so thoroughly did he master its rules that he never afterwards had to study any other works on the subject. An application of these rules to practice is preserved in a drawing of the grammar school at Plympton. It was so well done that the father exclaimed, "Now this exemplifies what the author of the 'Perspective' asserts, that by observing the rules laid down in this book a man may do wonders, for this is wonderful.”

Visitors to the Reynolds' Exhibition, which was held in the Grosvenor Gallery in 1884, may remember this little drawing, which was among the exhibits.

Portraits of his family and friends next occupied Reynolds' youthful pencil, while his love of art was influenced by reading Richardson's Treatise of Painting. This book first awoke in him his enthusiastic adoration of Raffaelle (of whose works he had till then seen nothing), a love he cherished until the end of his days. At seventeen his liking for art showing no diminution, the father decided he should follow a painter's career, and took him to London, where he placed him under Hudson, the most eminent artist England could then boast. By a curious accident he was entered at Hudson's on St. Luke's day, the patron saint of art and artists. Hudson set him at work at copying, a system Sir Joshua afterwards strenuously condemned. His words on this matter, written in the 2nd Discourse, should be “read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested" by all art professors and students-they are golden words of wisdom.

Notwithstanding the master's inadequate teaching, the pupil made such progress that he aroused Hudson's jealousy, who, after two years' apprenticeship, found a pretext for dismissing him. Reynolds, with what he had learnt, continued to paint down in Devonshire, taking the portraits of the local magnates. How conventional his style was at first is proved by the following anecdote. It was a favourite attitude with the portraitpainters of the time to represent their model with one hand in waistcoat and the hat under the arm, convenient because it dispensed the artist from the difficult task of painting the hand. Now it happened that one gentleman, whose portrait Reynolds painted, desired to have his hat on his head. The picture, which was quickly finished and posed in a commonplace attitude, was done without much study. When sent home, it was discovered, on inspection, that although this gentleman in his portrait had one hat upon his head, there was another under his arm.

For three years Reynolds painted in Devonshire, and certainly improved greatly under his own instructions and those of William Gandy of Exeter, so that some of the works of this period are undoubtedly fine. During these first years of seclusion he taught himself to think as well as to paint; and that the labour of the mind is the most essential requisite in forming a great painter is a doctrine he constantly inculcates in his Discourses, distinguishing it from that of the hand. He aptly applied the dictum of Grotius-"Nothing can come of nothing"-to demonstrate the necessity of teaching.

The more Reynolds thought, however, the less was he satisfied with his own performances, and that he did not see himself progress with greater speed no doubt fretted him the more, inasmuch as he had early declared it his fixed opinion that if he did not prove himself the best painter of his time, when arrived at the age of thirty, he never should. For the completion of his studies he unceasingly felt that he must visit Italy, and behold with his own eyes those masterpieces of which he had heard so much. Chance offered him a passage to the Continent in the flagship of Viscount Keppel, and thus, at the age of twenty-six, May 11th,