ETON COLLEGE PORTRAITS.
Eton College Portraits. By Lionel Cast. (Spottiswoode and Co. £5 5s.)—It was in the middle of the eighteenth century that Dr. Barnard, who was then Head-Master of Eton, first invented the plan of asking boys distinguished in the school to present him with their portraits instead of the usual leaving-fee. The custom was continued for nearly a hundred years, and the result is the remarkable collection which hangs in the Provost's lodge, of which this volume is a catalogue. By a stroke of good fortune the earlier of the pictures were presented at a time when English painting had reached its highest glory, and the boys belonged nearly all to noble families who would have scorned any painter less famous than Romney, Gainsborough, or Reynolds. To admirers of these artists no less than to Etonians this book, with its hundred reproductions, must appeal. To quote Mr. Cust's introduction, "there is no more beautiful stage in the period of adolescence, than that when the boy first unconsciously throws off the light trappings of childhood, and buckles on the more serious armour of the man." And if in aesthetic value the later portraits show a decline, yet there remains the interest of tracing in these scarcely formed features the characters of the famous men of the next generation.
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