re is now the veteran
Sheriff _emeritus_ of Perth. And I hear a story of a lady who returned
the other day to Edinburgh, after an absence of sixty years: "I could
see none of my old friends," she said, "until I went into the Raeburn
Gallery, and found them all there."

It would be difficult to say whether the collection was more interesting
on the score of unity or diversity. Where the portraits were all of the
same period, almost all of the same race, and all from the same brush,
there could not fail to be many points of similarity. And yet the
similarity of the handling seems to throw into more vigorous relief
those personal distinctions which Raeburn was so quick to seize. He was
a born painter of portraits. He looked people shrewdly between the eyes,
surprised their manners in their face, and had possessed himself of what
was essential in their character before they had been many minutes in
his studio. What he was so swift to perceive, he conveyed to the canvas
almost in the moment of conception. He had never any difficulty, he
said, about either hands or faces. About draperies or light or
composition, he might see room for hesitation or afterthought. But a
face or a hand was something plain and legible. There were no two ways
about it, any more than about the person's name. And so each of his
portraits is not only (in Doctor Johnson's phrase, aptly quoted on the
catalogue) "a piece of history," but a piece of biography into the
bargain. It is devoutly to be wished that all biography were equally
amusing, and carried its own credentials equally upon its face. These
portraits are racier than many anecdotes, and more complete than many a
volume of sententious memoirs. You can see whether you get a stronger
and clearer idea of Robertson the historian from Raeburn's palette or
Dugald Stewart's woolly and evasive periods. And then the portraits are
both signed and countersigned. For you have, first, the authority of the
artist, whom you recognise as no mean critic of the looks and manners of
men; and next you have the tacit acquiescence of the subject, who sits
looking out upon you with inimitable innocence, and apparently under the
impression that he is in a room by himself. For Raeburn could plunge at
once through all the constraint and embarrassment of the sitter, and
present the face, clear, open, and intelligent as at the most
disengaged moments. This is best seen in portraits where the sitter is
represented in some