chief employment, for many years past, has been painting the portraits of the young English, and other strangers of fortune, who vifit Rome. There are artists in England, fuperior in this, and every other branch of painting, to Battoni. They, like him, are feduced from the free walks of genius, and chained, by intereft, to the fervile drudgery of copying faces. Beauty is worthy of the most delicate pencil; but, gracious heaven! why should every periwig-pated fellow, without countenance or character, infift on seeing his chubby cheeks on canvas? "Could you not give a little expreffion to that countenance?" faid a gentleman to an eminent English painter, who showed him a portrait which he had just finished. "I made that attempt already," replied the painter; "but what the picture gained "in expreffion, it loft in likeness; and by "the time there was a little common fenfe "in "in the countenance, nobody knew for "whom it was intended. I was obliged, "therefore, to make an entire new pic 66 ture, with the face perfectly like, and "perfectly meaningless, as you fee it." Let the colours for ever remain, which record the laft fainting efforts of Chatham; the expiring triumph of Wolf; or the indecifion of Garrick, equally allured by the two contending Mufes! But let them perifh and fly from the canvas, which blind felf-love fpreads for infipidity and uglinefs! Why should posterity know, that the first genius of the age, and those whofe pencils were formed to speak to the heart, and delineate beauteous Nature, were chiefly employed in copying faces? and many of them, faces that imitate humanity fo abominably, that, to use Hamlet's expreffion, they feem not the genuine work of Nature, but of Nature's journeymen. To this ridiculous felf-love, equally prevalent among the great vulgar and small, fome fome of the best painters in France, Germany, and Great Britain, are obliged for their fubfiftence. This creates a fufpicion, that a tafte for the real beauties of painting, is not quite fo univerfal, as a fenfibility to their own perfonal beauties, among the individuals of thefe countries. And nothing can be a ftronger proof of the important light in which men appear in their own eyes, and their small importance in those of others, than the different treatment which the generality of portraits receive, during the life, and after the death, of their conftituents. During the firft of thefe periods, they inhabit the finest apartments of the houfes 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 fecond, they begin to be neglected; in a fhort time are ignominioufly thruft up to the garret; and; to fill up the measure of their affliction, they finally are thrown out of doors, in the most barbarous man nera ner, without diftinction of rank, age, or fex. 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 prefent century, Barons of the most ancient families, armed cap-a-pee, are to be purchased for two or three ducats, in moft of the towns of Germany. French Marquifes, in full fuits of embroidered velvet, may be had at Paris ftill 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 LI. Rome. T HERE are no theatrical entertainments 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 fuch restraint. Every kind of amusement, indeed, in this gay feafon, is followed with the greatest eagerness. The natural gravity of the Roman citizens is changed into a mirthful vivacity; and the serious, fombre city of Rome exceeds Paris itself in fprightlinefs and gaiety. 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 ftreets, masked, in the |