, may become a varied banquet. To
this Granger adds, that in a collection of engraved portraits, the
contents of many galleries are reduced into the narrow compass of a few
volumes; and the portraits of eminent persons, who distinguished
themselves through a long succession of ages, may be turned over in a
few hours.

"Another advantage," Granger continues, "attending such an assemblage
is, that the methodical arrangement has a surprising effect upon the
memory. We see the celebrated contemporaries of every age almost at one
view; and the mind is insensibly led to the history of that period. I
may add to these, an important circumstance, which is, the power that
such a collection will have in _awakening genius_. A skilful preceptor
will presently perceive the true bent of the temper of his pupil, by his
being struck with a Blake or a Boyle, a Hyde or a Milton."

A circumstance in the life of Cicero confirms this observation. Atticus
had a gallery adorned with the images or portraits of the great men of
Rome, under each of which he had severally described their principal
acts and honours, in a few concise verses of his own composition. It was
by the contemplation of two of these portraits (the ancient Brutus and a
venerable relative in one picture) that Cicero seems to have incited
Brutus, by the example of these his great ancestors, to dissolve the
tyranny of Caesar. General Fairfax made a collection of engraved
portraits of warriors. A story much in favour of portrait-collectors is
that of the Athenian courtesan, who, in the midst of a riotous banquet
with her lovers, accidentally casting her eyes on the _portrait_ of a
philosopher that hung opposite to her seat, the happy character of
temperance and virtue struck her with so lively an image of her own
unworthiness, that she suddenly retreated for ever from the scene of
debauchery. The Orientalists have felt the same charm in their pictured
memorials; for "the imperial Akber," says Mr. Forbes, in his Oriental
Memoirs, "employed artists to make portraits of all the principal omrahs
and officers in his court;" they were bound together in a thick volume,
wherein, as the Ayeen Akbery, or the Institutes of Akber, expresses it,
"The PAST are kept in lively remembrance; and the PRESENT are insured
immortality."

Leonard Aretin, when young and in prison, found a portrait of Petrarch,
on which his eyes were perpetually fixed; and this sort of contemplation
inflamed the desir