man countenances staring out of a piece of canvass.

Pompeio Battoni is the best Italian painter now at Rome. His taste and genius led him to history painting, and his reputation was originally acquired in that line; but by far the greater part of his fortune, whatever that may be, has flowed through a different channel. His chief employment, for many years past, has been painting the portraits of the young English, and other strangers of fortune, who visit Rome. There are artists in England superior in this, and every other branch of painting, to Battoni. They, like him, are seduced from the free walks of genius, and chained by interest, to the servile drudgery of copying faces. Beauty is worthy of the most delicate pencil; bur, gracious heaven! why should every periwig-pated fellow, without countenance or character, insist on seeing his chubby cheeks on canvas?

"Could you not give a little expression him a portrait which he had just finished. "I made that attempt already," replied the painter; " but what the picture gained "in expression, it. lost in likeness; and, by ** the time there was a little common fense "in the countenance, nobody knew for "whom it was intended. I was obliged, "therefore, to make an entire new picture, "with the face perfectly like, and perfectly "meaningless, as you fee it."

Let the colours for ever remain, which record the last fainting efforts of Chatham; the expiring triumph of Wolf; or the indecision of Garrick, equally allured by the two contending Muses! But let them perish and fly from the canvas, which blind self-love spreads for insipidity and ugliness! Why should posterity know, that the first genius of the age, and those whose pencils were formed to speak to the heart, and delineate beauteous Nature, were chiefly employed in copying faces? and many

To this ridiculous self-love, equally prevalent among the great, vulgar, and small, some of the best painters in France, Germany, and Great Britain, are obliged for their subsistence. This creates a suspicion, that a taste for the real beauties of painting, b not quite so universal, as a sensibility to their own personal beauties, among the individuals of these countries. And northing can be a stronger proof of the important light in which men appear in their own eyes, and their small importance in those of others, rhan the different treaN ment which the generality of portraits receive, during the life, and after the death, of their constituents. During the first of these periods, they inhabit the finest apartments of the houses to which they belong; they are flattered by the guests, and always viewed with an eye of complacency by the landlord. But, after the commencement of the second, they begin to be neglected; in a short time are ignominioufly thrush up to the garret; and, to fill up the measure of their affliction, they finally are throw r\ <J8 VIEW OF SOCIETY AND

per, without distinction of rank, age, or sex. Those of former times are scattered, like Jews, with their long beards and brown complexions, all over the face of the earth: and, even of the present century, Barons of the most ancient families, armed cap-a-pee, are to be purchased for two or three ducats, in most of the towns of Germany. French Marquises, in full suits of embroidered velvet, may be had at Paris still cheaper: and many worshipful citizens of London are to be seen dangling on the walls of an auction-room, when they are scarce cold in their graves.

LETTER LII.

Rome.

Here are no theatrical entertain

-* ments permitted in this city, except during the Carnival; but they are then attended with a degree of ardour unknown in capitals whose inhabitants are under no such restraint. Every kind of amusement, indeed, in this gay season, is followed with the greatest eagerness. The natural gravity of the Roman citizens is. changed into a mirthful vivacity; and the serious, sombre city of Rome exceeds Paris itself in sprightliness and gai-, ety. This spirit seems gradually to augment, from its commencement; and is at its height in the last week of the fix which comprehend the Carnival. The citizens then appear in the streets, masked, in the characters nf tJarlermins. Pantalnnno