yearly leading thousands westward, and the
word of whose Chief, both in temporals and
spirituals, is omnipotent?

NATIONAL PORTRAITS.

THE project of forming a national collection
of portraits of great and remarkable
Englishmen, of getting together a nucleus of such
portraits as were to be had, and adding to them
as opportunity offered, was undoubtedly a good
one. Hunger for a sight of the countenance of
an illustrious individual of any kind, being an
appetite strongly developed in all human beings,
the attempt to gratify it, by providing a
National Portrait Gallery, accessible to everybody,
is a move in the right direction.

We shall best form an estimate of the young
National Collection of Portraits, by taking a
glance round the rooms in Great George-street,
Westminster, in which the pictures already
collected are for the present exhibited. And
let us hope that it will not be much longer that
the collection remains buried in these most
inconvenient and ill-lighted apartments. The
pictures could not be seen to less advantage;
indeed, some of them can not be seen at all, either
by reason of the dark corners in which they are
placed, or through their being so ingeniously
lighted that their surfaces reflect the different
objects in the gallery with such fidelity, that you
can see all the pictures in the room except the
one you are looking at. This is pre-eminently
the case with the portraits of John Wesley and
William Shakespeare: in looking at either of
which you get a very much better idea of your
own proportions than of those of the preacher or
the poet.

The portraits, at present got together, are one
hundred and sixty-four in number. The catalogue
is arranged on a most inconvenient principle, but
one manages to find out, that of this illustrious
one hundred and sixty-four, there are twenty-
six politicians: twenty-five professors of religion:
fifteen authors: as many artists: fourteen poets:
ten courtiers or diplomatists: the same number
of soldiers: seven lawyers: six naval heroes:
six doctors or surgeons: four engineers: one
philosopher: one representative of science: one
musician: three great revolutionists: two
explorers: two philanthropists: and one professor
of education. The rest are monarchs, or persons
whom it is impossible to classify.

Before we look about us, let us bestow a
passing word of remark on that curious
disproportion in the numbers of each profession
or calling indicated by the figures given above.
If with the politicians proper, who number
twenty-six, we class Hampden, Cromwell, and
Ireton, and if we add to these the list of
persons engaged in diplomacy, we bring the
number of the politicians up to thirty-nine;
an immense preponderance over the other
professions here represented. Classing, again,
the army and navy together, we find that the
profession of arms has sixteen representatives
in this collection, and so we get to the
conclusion that the politicians, the professors of
religion, and those who make war, are the three
classes which muster strongest.

Authors and artists have been generally much
mixed up in social life; and this, no doubt, has
led to the former in many cases sitting to the
latter as a matter of friendly feeling on both
sides. The artists, too, have continually, and
naturally enough, painted each other's
likenesses, and not unfrequently, by the aid of
the looking-glass, their own. Hence, the
proportion of portraits of authors and artists is
greater than that of men engaged in other
pursuits. The small number of engineers and
scientific men represented in this gallery, is
remarkable; but one must remember that
under both heads popular development and
appreciation have been comparatively recent.
It is to be regretted that there are only two
philanthropists here—John Howard and Elizabeth
Fry; and it is a sufficiently remarkable
fact that in this National Portrait Gallery there
is only one musical genius, and he is a German.

The place of honour in the National
Portrait Gallery—the No. 1 over the chimney-
piece of the principal room—is given to the
Chandos portrait of Shakespeare. Beside it,
is a rude engraving of the poet. The mask
taken from the bust on the tomb at Stratford
is close by. It is difficult to have much
faith in any one of these. The engraving
is rude and puerile, but the cast—the well-
known mask set on a slab of black marble—has
perhaps a better claim on our respect than any
other portrait of Shakespeare. We know
something about it. In the first place we know
that it was intended for Shakespeare; we
know that it was set up within seven years of
his decease; and we know that it was placed in
the church of the town where he was born,
where he lived, and was known. There seems
good reason to believe that until Malone had
the bust in the Stratford church daubed over
with white paint, it was coloured after life, the
eyes light hazel, the hair and beard auburn.

The Chandos portrait is that of a very dark
man—he might be an Italian, or a Spaniard—
a little sharp dark man, with earrings, black
hair, and a thin short beard covering the
whole of the lower part of the face—not
shaved off at the sides as in other portraits.
The legend attached to this picture is, that
it was left by John Taylor (by whom, or
by Richard Burbage, it was painted) to Sir
William Davenant, who is reported, when a
child under ten years of age, to have had many
opportunities of seeing and associating with
Shakespeare. The pedigree of the picture,
after it got out of Sir W. Davenant's possession,
is satisfactorily traced; but the first part of
its history is obscure. Altogether, one would
rather trust to the bust than to this portrait,
but at best we seem to be almost as uncertain
about Shakespeare's appearance as about
everything else connected with him. A general idea
of a man with a forehead somewhat bald, and