of half closing his glimmering eyes, and making desperate hems occasionally, to impress on the little boys he was wide awake; in all the gradations from the first inclination to drop, to the last awful dip of his head on his brawny breast; his snuffling and awful snore, his waking horror at his own noise, and his solemn struggles to keep his dignity,-Wilkie caught, and sketched in his prayer-book.

We have now got through the infancy and boyhood of this great artist, and I hope the anecdotes related, which are from his aunt, his mother, and his father's friends, and his own oldest friend, the Rev. James Anderson, the clergyman at Cults-I hope, I say, they prove beyond dispute that a genius for design is something more than a mind of large general powers accidentally determined to a particular pursuit, but that they prove in addition to the general capacity, there is a peculiar susceptibility to the impression of objects on the senses to the brain which propels to imitation by line and colour, in spite of father, grandfather, and friends.

Wilkie's father and friends, seeing it would be cruel to attempt crushing, if not hopeless, his predominant passion, considered it more sensible to regulate than extinguish the passion, and with great judgment David was sent to Edinburgh, and placed in that admirable school, then kept by Graham, 1802.

Graham might have been a very sensible and shrewd man-a good teacher, but not a great genius. But Wilkie always spoke of him with respect and affection.

In 1802, David Wilkie came to Edinburgh, and lodged in Nicholson-street. Shortly after he had entered Graham's school, he sent over to his parents this opposite drawing of a foot as a specimen of his advancement; his good and

venerable father thus pleased, showed the drawing to many members of his congregation, who, after examining the foot again and again, declared, Wilkie told me, it was more like a fish than any thing else!

As a curiosity I requested the foot, 1814, and he gave it to me, amidst the authentications of his mother and sister to the truth of the anecdote related.

Whilst he was at Graham's school, he contended for the prize in historical painting, and his picture of the murder of Macduff's wife and children must now be in existence; there was an originality, I have heard, in the picture, unlike any of the other students'.

Wilkie, from the straitened income of his good father, had been early taught the value of money-a very important acquisition in early life; he was therefore very soon compelled to exercise his profession as a means of subsistence, to relieve his father; and he began about 1803 and 1804, to paint portraits of his friends; the whole of these remain, and such was his prudence and economy, that by his own honest exertions alone he saved money enough by 1805 to come to London.

During the period he was a student at Graham's, he painted that wonderful production of Pitlassie Fair, not much known in London; but which was exhibited with his other works in 1812, in Pall Mall.

He began this work, from the sheer impulses of his own great genius, after seeing the Fair, and it is composed in a style of knowledge and science that argues most extraordinary diligence in study, to have discovered so early the hidden principles of composition worthy of a higher style, and without having ever seen a picture by Teniers at that time in all his life, as he told me. Prints from Raffaelle he must have seen, as he acknowledged, and

from Raffaelle he undoubtedly imbibed those early hidden secrets of arrangement which distinguished every thing he did.

To shew you the power of innate genius over difficul ties, when he began this picture he had not been able to save money enough to buy an easel, but like a great mind, his ingenuity at once contrived an admirable substitute; he used to pull out the under drawer of an old chest in his upper room, and resting his picture on the projecting drawer, lean it against the body, and paint: thus he began and proceeded with that wonderful production.

Lough, in a back garret of a green-grocer's shop, modelling his superb Milo-and another artist paying his models by his coats, without meat, without candles, without money, finishing a well-known work-and Wilkie with no easel, painting his immortal Fair, are three instances of what is meant by the power of gifted genius!

How many are there who would have put off painting till they had got the finest blues, the most mahogany of easels, the most silken of brushes, the most immaculate of oils, and the most translucent of lights-heaven help their innate power! When any difficulty, however apparently insurmountable, stops invention, there is not much to stop. But when invention goes on in starvation, in want, without help, without employment, let the possessor be sure he is the man, and will have his day at last, let what will oppress him.

From his early letters at this period, one thing will strike the young student, and I hope it will impress him, viz. his modesty, his docility, and his willingness to do any thing he was employed to do, provided it kept him out of debt and out of obligation.

In the first letter I possess, to an old Scotch friend,