CURRENT LITERATURE.
The Portfolio. September. (Seeloys.)-- The frontispiece of the Portfolio for this month is a fine etching of one of Gainsborough's very best portraits, "Orpin, Parish Clerk of Bradford, Wiltshire." It is needless to say more than that Mr. Wanner, the etcher, has done full justice to his subject. Mr. Wornum adds a notice of the artist's life and works. It is to be wished that these notices, which are commend- ably full of information, were expressed in more articulate speech. What a phrase is this:—" Gainsborough is described as having used ve17 - long brushes,—that is, the handles of them." Strictly, this means that he painted with the handles of very long brushes. M. Brunet-Debaines' etching after Ruysdael is worked out with an exquisite elaboration which, however, does not impair the general effectiveness of the whole. Of the literary contents of the number we may select for notice Mr. G. A. Simcox's very ingenious essay on "Art and Antiquarians." A feeling easily intelligible and not wholly unpraiseworthy has declared itself in some quarters against restoration. We are told that there is more interest in a building that exhibits the change; possibly the injuries, wrought by successive generations, than in one to which the hand of the restorer has given back an uniformity of neatness or utility. Mr. Simcox, in opposition, gives us a valuable discourse on the text that the future of a building is more important than its history. Its con- cluding passage, referring as it does to one of the most important archi- tectural questions of the day, a question, too, on which the Portfolio itself has given currency to some unprofitable and unpractical criticism, deserves to be quoted :—" If we find the grey stone of St. Paul's oold and dingy under a London sky, we are not bound to be content with it, because Wren wished for little more. The question of what is to be done with a great church, which in its present state is unsatisfactory to three people out of four who care for it, is much too difficult to be complicated by the assumption that one of the faultiest of the supreme buildings of the world is to be kept untouched till we can find &faultless artist to design a faultless scheme of decoration."
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