The Exhibition of Miniatures at South Kensington. 95 



course the exhibition has a double and emulous interest ; the 

 interest of the works as artistic productions, and the interest, 

 historical or other, of the persons pourtrayed. Scores and 

 scores of the niost famous men and women of the past three 

 centuries and a half are here brought visibly and vividly before 

 us ; in many cases we can trace their progress from childhood 

 or adolescence to old age, and see the stamps set upon them 

 by time and chance, by passion and self-interest, by self- 

 control and abnegation, by intellect and folly. We shall now 

 proceed, with but little attempt at classification and still less at 

 exhaustiveness, to pick out a few bricks from this beautiful 

 Babylon. Our selection will be guided by the double interest 

 we have just adverted to — that of the painting itself on the 

 one hand, and of the sitter on the other ; the interest, however, 

 is so frequently fused, the best sitters eliciting the highest skill 

 of the finest artists, that we shall not make any formal division 

 between the two classes of examples. We may add that the 

 compiler of the catalogue explains that the names of both 

 artist and sitter are, with few exceptions, given as stated by 

 the owners of the miniatures, and that the catalogue cannot 

 therefore be appealed to as authority on this point — a circum- 

 stance we may regret, but can hardly complain of under the 

 particular conditions which affected the present collection. We 

 must also apologize to the owners for omitting, with a view to 

 space, their names in our enumeration of the works : for this 

 detail of great practical importance we must refer the student 

 to the catalogue — the choice for ourselves being between the 

 omission of owners' names, and that of some portraits which 

 fairly claim to be specified. 



BRITISH PORTRAITS BEFORE AND DURING THE TUDOR PERIOD. 



Edward IV. and others. Water-colour, or what is usually 

 termed an illumination, on paper ; this must be the oldest work 

 in the exhibition, or rather, as explained in the catalogue, a 

 copy of such a work. It is inscribed as follows : " Earl Rivers 

 presenting his book, and Caxton his printer, to Edward IV., 

 the queen, and prince. From a curious MS. in the Arch- 

 bishop's Library at Lambeth. The portrait of the prince 

 (afterwards Edward V.) is the only one known of him, and has 

 been engraved by Vertue among the heads of the kings. The 

 person in a cap and robe of state is probably Richard Duke of 

 Gloucester, as he resembles the king, and as Clarence was 

 always too great an enemy of the queen to be distinguished by 

 her brother. The book was printed in 1477, when Clarence 

 was in Ireland." 



Henry VII. " Represented holding four heartsease flowers 



