I KNOW of no painter, who shows more just reflection and good judgment in his way of conceiving a subject, and arranging the parts of it, than Allan. His circumstances are always most happily chosen, and the characters introduced are so skilfully delineated, as to prove that the painter has been an excellent observer of life. His pictures are full of thought, and show a most active and intelligent mind. They display most graphically the fruits of observation; and the whole of the world which they represent, is suffused over with a very rare and precious breathing of tenderness and delicacy of feeling. In short, were his subjects taken from the highest field of his art, and had they any fundamental ideas of permanent and lofty interest at the bottom of them, I do not see why Mr Allan should not be truly a Great Painter. But his genius has as yet been cramped and confined by a rather over-stretched compliance with the taste of the times.

The highest purpose to which painting has ever been applied, is that of expressing ideas connected with Religion; and the decay of the interest attached by mankind to ideas of that class, is evinced by nothing in a more striking manner, than by the nature of the subjects now (in preference to them) commonly chosen for painting, and most relished by the existing generation. It would seem, indeed, as if the decay of interest in great things and great ideas had not shown itself in regard to religion alone. Even subjects taken from national history seem to be scarcely so familiar to the imaginations and associations of ordinary spectators, as to be much relished or deeply felt in any modern exhibition-room. It is probable, that subjects like those chosen by Wilkie (and of late by Allan also,) come most home now-a-days to the feelings of the multitude. They pre-suppose no knowledge of the past—no cherished ideas habitually dwelt on by the imagination—no deep feeling of religion—no deep feeling of patriotism—but merely a capacity for the most common sympathies and sensibilities of human nature.