Mr. G. F. Watts . has presented the National Portrait
Gallery with a splendid gift, fifteen oil portraits and two drawings. These include his noble pictures of some of the most eminent men of our day,—Carlyle, Browning, Matthew Arnold, Sir Andrew Clark, Sir Charles Halle, Lord Lawrence, Sir Henry Layard, the Earl of Lytton, Cardinal Manning, John Stuart Mill, Sir Anthony Panizzi, D. G. Rossetti, Lord Shaftesbury, Lord Sherbrooke, Sir Henry Taylor, Lord Ten- nyson, and Thomas Wright. No portraits of our day contain such perfect renderings of the highest element of the character portrayed as those of Mr. Watts. Indeed we have sometimes known them to be more portraits of the finer part of the man than even of the whole man, and yet never other than speaking likenesses, though likenesses taken in the man's highest phase. If the National Portrait Gallery proves a true image of the many complex elements in our own highest civilisation, we shall owe it in great measure to Mr. Watts's noble genius.
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