When Mr. E. G. Wakefield was going to publish a
book on Colonization, an instinctive sense that its out-speaking might be too robust for a Board, induced him to offer his resignation as Director of the New Zealand Com- pany. The other Directors thankfully accepted that offer of relief from the possibility of sitting in council with a man who was going to expound the principles of their own avocation in a book, and to describe the official treatment of them without compromising those principles or abating the description to fit official convenience ; and the worthy functionaries ex- pressed their gratitude in very suitable terms. The shareholders of the Company, however, had not contracted that reverential awe of the official frown; and when the Directors accepted their release from too close as- sociation with independent intellect, the shareholders felt an impulse to identify themselves more closely with that which had created the Com- pany and inspired its life. They asked Mr. Wakefield to sit for his por- trait ; and, with an almost feminine malice, they resolved that the portrait should be hung in the Board-room—to eye those very Directors who had feared to sit in the shadow of a superior mind! The poor Directors could not but acquiesce in that arrangement. The portrait is painted by Mr. J. E. Collins (34 Percy Street, Bedford Square) with the fire of a shareholder—for he has caught the very make and life of the man. Not quite in Board costume, however ; for Mr. Wakefield is in his country garb, seated at his own table, and surrounded by his dogs. But it is the figure, the aspect, and countenance of life. In that sturdy well-developed form, that florid complexion, that frank but sagacious countenance, you see the genius of the man—the energy of action, the mastery of statesmanship, the full but plain Saxon style of writing. As a work of art, the painting is fairly executed, according to the received *fashion : the composition is natural and appropriate • the niceness is complete. The Board will perpetually be thinking that the dread ex-Director is going to speak ! The picture should be engraved. Numbers would be glad to possess the portrait ; and many would be curious to see for the first time the linea- ments of so remarkable a man, who is publicly known rather by his in- fluence on the practical statesmanship of the day than in person.
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