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died of a disease of the liver February 23d, 1792. His body, after lying in state in Somerset House, was buried with great pomp in St. Paul's Cathedral, where a statue by Flaxman was some years afterwards erected to his memory. The day after his death his eulogium from the pen of Burke appeared in the public prints, containing some high and merited compliments to both Sir Joshua's great professional attainments and social virtues. "He was," writes Burke, "on very many accounts one of the most memorable men of his time. He was the first Englishman who added the praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his country. In taste, in grace, in facility, in happy invention, and in the richness and harmony of colouring, he was equal to the greatest masters of the renowned ages." "His social virtues in all the relations and all the habitudes of life, rendered him the centre of a very great and unparalleled variety of agreeable societies, which will be dissipated by his death." "The loss of no man of his time can be felt with more sincere general and unmixed sorrow."

In his busy life of almost unparalleled success, Sir Joshua Reynolds necessarily accumulated a large fortune. His works are extremely numerous, and were well paid; even his engraved pictures amount to upwards of 700. He left in all about 80,000l., the principal portion of which went to his niece, Miss Palmer, afterwards Marchioness of Thomond. His collections alone sold for 17,000l. He was never married. Sir Joshua Reynolds has left few literary labours besides his fifteen "Discourses delivered at the biennial distribution of medals at the Royal Academy, and of which there is a magnificent illustrated edition by John Burnet. Of his other contributions, his "Notes on his Tour through Flanders and Holland in 1781," is the most important.

The partiality of British criticism has, with some few

exceptions, awarded Sir Joshua unqualified praise. "To the grandeur, the truth, and simplicity of Titian," says his pupil and biographer, Northcote, "and to the daring strength of Rembrandt, he has united the chasteness and delicacy of Vandyck." This is the opinion of a devoted admirer. Sir Joshua certainly struck out a new path in portrait, and by uniting graceful composition and breadth of light and shade with a rich and mellow tone of colouring, established a novel and rich style, well calculated to attract and captivate the taste of a public accustomed only to the dry productions of a Kneller or a Jervas. It is, however, not without much justice that the style of Reynolds has been termed superficial and alluring. His principal object was effect, depending on colour, and light and shade. His principle was, that the likeness and individual character depended more upon the "general effect," than upon the exact expression of the peculiarities, or minute discrimination of the parts. To this generally dangerous principle may be traced the characteristic defects of his own works, of which the "Holy Family," in the National Gallery at Marlborough House, is a remarkable specimen-a mere general florid effect, without intellectual character, and wholly wanting in drawing or modelling -in other words, precision of parts. The forms are merely indicated, not expressed, and the execution is exceedingly loose, the composition having much more the effect of a large, careless sketch, than that of a finished picture. Sir Joshua's great fear of falling into "the vulgar error," as he has termed it, "of imitating nature too closely," and while aiming at individuality attaining only "littleness," led him into the opposite extreme of acquiring breadth at the expense of nature, by an almost total neglect of modelling, or drawing in its strictest sense. And this was the rule, not the exception, of his practice in all the later years of his remarkable career. And through his great influence upon his immediate followers, these individual defects specified, became, and have

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been, the distinctive characteristics with the painters of the British school for more than half a century. Now, however, happily, a better system is being rapidly established.

It may have been observed that Sir Joshua's historical efforts belong to the latter part of his life. It is a fact that has been remarked by his biographer, Northcote, that Sir Joshua was neglected as a portrait-painter when Romney grew into fashion. Difference of price cannot have been the cause of this, for Romney's prices were also high, though less than Sir Joshua's. Romney was, however, distinguished for fine and powerful drawing, and his best efforts contrasting with the exceedingly careless portraits of Reynolds's later years, though full of that peculiar power which distinguished him, may have legitimately caused a decline of the public favour on the part of Sir Joshua. Lord Thurlow is reported to have said, "Reynolds and Romney divide the town; I am of the Romney faction." The influence of Romney was, however, but a transitory fashion, while Reynolds, on the other hand, became the idol of posterity. And we may congratulate ourselves on this rivalry if we owe to it the greater share of his time which Sir Joshua gave to historical painting towards the end of his career; for though prominently displaying all his defects of style, no number of his ordinary portraits would replace their loss; and while bad as examples for the aspiring student, as specimens of an original and individual genius they are works of great interest. "The Tragic Muse" alone is sufficient to immortalise his name as a great painter, realising the charming compliment he paid to the great actress: when the latter, on inspecting her finished portrait, remarked on Sir Joshua's name written on the border of her dress, he replied, "I could not lose the honour this opportunity afforded me, of going down to posterity on the hem of your garment."

R. N. W.

LIFE, IN ITS HIGHER FORMS.

No. I.

FISHES.

IN passing from one country to another, we do not find any boundary lines in nature corresponding to those which we see upon our maps. There may be a gradual change of features, indeed; as the vegetation that characterises Spain differs from that of France, and this latter from that of Prussia; but the traveller is not conscious of any abrupt change; the last mile of his journey on one side of either frontier being pretty much the same as the first mile beyond it. We speak, too, of the various ranks and classes of society the labourer, the artisan, the tradesman, the manufacturer, the merchant, the professional man, the scientific man, the statesman, the peer, the prince, the sovereign; but the homes, the raiment, the manners of these, though characterised by well-marked diversities and peculiarities, are not separated by broad lines of demarcation, but pass imperceptibly into each other. The diversities exist in nature, but the boundary lines are arbitrary.

So it is in Natural History. The student will do well to bear in mind continually that those subdivisions of organic beings which we call Classes, Orders, Families, and Genera, are but convenient aids for recording and remembering facts. There is but one division which exists in nature,—that of Species. Each Species is separated from every other Species by an impassable boundary (whether we can in all cases determine it practically or not). It was originally created distinct, and distinct it remains. But the group of Species which

we call a Genus is a merely arbitrary collocation; convenient, indeed, as we before said, and to a certain extent natural, inasmuch as it is a formula for expressing the community of certain characters; but still arbitrary, inasmuch as it might be made more or less extensive, according to the pleasure of the naturalist who chooses the characters on which it is made to rest. And so of all the higher groups.

The great division of animal existences which we propose now to consider presents peculiarities of structure and function, which we can seize and identify with great precision when we look at it as a whole. But if we examine the points of contact between it and the great groups we have dismissed, we find these broadly-marked distinctions becoming evanescent, and melting into those of the conterminous phalanx.

One grand distinction of the higher animals is commemorated in the title by which they are generally known,— VERTEBRATA. They possess an internal skeleton composed of many pieces, and formed of a substance, which is not deposited layer by layer like the shells of MOLLUSCA, but is capable of growth in the manner of fleshy tissues, being permeated both by blood-vessels and nerves, and undergoing a perpetual change in its component atoms. In its simplest form this substance is flexible and elastic, and is called cartilage; but by the addition, in various degrees, of the calcareous element, it becomes hard, solid, and inflexible, and we call it bone.

Now, as in the highest forms among the MOLLUSCA we saw the external skeleton of shell gradually vanishing, and traces of an internal skeleton of cartilage appearing, (as the cranial ring, or skull, and the fin-plates, of the Cuttlefishes) so in the most rudimentary of the FISHES, as the Lamprey, and that curious creature the Sea-hag (Myxine), and, more markedly still, in the dubious Lancelet (Amphi