the total absence of what the painters call accessories. It is simple,
and though honourably decorated, is unadorned by what is considered
'groscape' drapery; and yet Mr. Pickersgill was at one time an
unqualified admirer of cloaks; every hawbuck of a fellow who sat to him,
was wrapped up in a cloak: this he has conquered, and we rejoice at it.
The portrait of Lady Coote is a good picture; it is a pity that her
ladyship had not sat a few years earlier; but that is no affair of the
painter. A picture of Lady Londonderry, in the costume of Queen
Elizabeth, by a Frenchman is amazingly like. There is a story about this
dress which only proves the advantages of making experiments before any
grand display. The petticoat of the Virgin Queen, as personated by her
ladyship, was so thickly covered with diamonds, that the substratum of
material could scarcely be seen; and nothing could be more splendid than
the effect; but the diamonds glittered all round the dress, behind and
before, and at the side; and so long as her ladyship paraded the
magnificent suite of her apartments, all was well, and all shone
brilliantly; but lo and behold, when her ladyship threw herself
gracefully on her mimic throne, she found that she might as well be
sitting in her _robe de chambre_ on a pebbly pavement, or a heap of
flints just prepared for Macadamization. Stones, though precious, are
still stones, and the jump the Marchioness gave when she first felt the
full effect of her jewels, is described as something prodigious. So
handsome a person, however, might easily dispense with such ornaments. A
queen of hearts may always look down upon a mere queen of diamonds.

"And what are we to say of other representations? What a sensation (at
any other period how much greater would it have been!) Mr. Sheridan
Knowles' Hunchback has made: why Mr. Sheridan Knowles made his hero a
Hunchback I cannot imagine. The play is an admirable play; and what is
as strange a part of the affair as any, is the acting of the author. To