subjects is a thing to be hoped for, our artists have labored in the cause of religion, and he who comes first on the list of English painters was at least a deep and earnest "preacher of righteousness." I allude to William Hogarth. All will allow how truly English was his art, how peculiar to his own age and time, yet containing truths for all time. Arising at a period when the habits of society were less refined than at present, and vice more outwardly expressed and tolerated than would now be permitted, he was the merciless satirist, the scourger of profligacy in all ranks, and read to all the most stirring and terrible lessons as a moralist, without forgetting that he was a painter.

After Hogarth-Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Wilson, must be considered as founders of the modern British School; for the two first, as portrait-painters, it is hardly possible to take too high a rank. Those who have been enabled to see their works in the late Manchester Exhibition will feel how thoroughly such portraits as the "Nelly O'Brien" or the "Lady Althorp and Child" of Reynolds, or "Mrs. Graham" or the "Blue Boy" of Gainsborough, are worthy to be placed side by side even with those of Titian or Vandyk.

I have said that it is a characteristic of English pictures to appeal to the affections and home-feelings of the people; and the subjects chosen are generally some touching incident of daily life, or from our own poets or writers: thus they are open to the understandings of all. How much more are the general public likely to be touched and softened by such pictures as Landseer's "Random Shot or "Shepherd's Chief Mourner" than by the Boar Hunts of even a Rubens or Snyders! In the "Random Shot," the lesson is almost too painful; yet, like a tragedy, it delights while it afflicts us. A young fawn stands on the snow-drifted moor beside the dead body of its dam. The foot-prints in the white snow are dabbled with the mother's blood-she has been smitten by the cruel hunter's careless shot into the herd. Who is there that, shuddering at the slow death in prospect for the harmless little one, does not forswear the hunter's sport, which leads even by an accident to such an end as this? Or take the other beautiful work, "The Shepherd's Chief Mourner," one of the pictures in our noble gift. What a history does it contain of companionship on the hills in storm and sunshine, of toils and watchings, of hunger and unrest endured together; the whole of the shepherd's simple life is seen on that little canvaslonely it was but for that one friend, now left to mourn over his master's grave. Examine the details of the picture; they will tell you at a glance that master's age, his religion, and his hopes, of his hard fare and bare lodging, apart from his fellow-men and kind, but finding strong affection in the brute creation; "The righteous man is merciful to his beast," saith that Scripture which lies open at his lonely coffin's side, and that he was merciful, the attachment even after death of his faithful colly shows. Here is a subject that it wants neither rank nor education to comprehend: the wayfaring man, though a fool, can not fail to understand it, for a dog is the companion of the humblest, and even the beg gar has one by his side. The commonest minds may be touched to tears by the tale of a life and history that a single glance tells.

Or if you would see how our painters touch the incidents of every-day life, look at the pictures by Webster, which are also included in the spontaneous gift of Mr. Sheepshanks. In the "Going to" and "Coming from the Fair" of this painter you see the simple pleasures of the agricultural population, not a stilted theatrical display of country life such as we should find depicted in the false pastorals of Watteau and Lancret, wherein kings and queens, and lords and ladies, play at Colin and Lubin, at Phyllis and Corydon-but true-hearted, honest country ploughmen, with kindly hearts and full of love for little children. How different from the drunken boors and frows of the Dutch school, maudlin and filthy in their cups, pouring a dram perchance down the throats of their fractious children to stunt them into the same dwarfed mis-shapen growth as themselves. Look again at this painter's picture of "Sickness and Health;" how simple, yet how touching! It may not be painted with the charming facility of Teniers, nor have the lustrous jewel-like richness of Ostade, but how is it touched with the sweet affections, the joys, and sorrows of home! At a cottage door, beneath a sheltering tree, and looking out on fields and flowers, sits, propped up with pillows, a sick child. The languor and self-indulgence of returning health is in every limb. A smile plays over her pale face as she

looks at her healthy sisters dancing together beneath the flickering shadows to the Savoyard's music. How true is the tender expression of the mother, who hangs over her, and who for a time forgets the sportive beauty of her healthful children to muse over this stricken one, and to see if the tide of sickness has really ebbed away! It is a tale common to every home, and touching to every heart.

[We omit Mr. Redgrave's notice of the peculiarities of Mulready, Leslie, Collins, Newton, &c.]

Now, it is through these our English painters that we must learn to love and understand the old masters. What is there in the subjects of the old masters, with all their beauties and all their excellences-granting that they have all that are attributed to them-calculated to touch the mind of our own people like these I have named? What to our multitudes are fat Bacchuses and maudlin Silenuses? What do they know of Cephalus and Procris, of Diana and Endymion? To them Mercury and Venus are but mere names. Nor with the dreary saints and dark martyrs of the olden church have they more sympathy; nay, they have often to overcome a repugnance, and a natural one, to the subjects of such works; and though it is true that Sebastian submits to his arrows, and Laurence to his gridiron, but too often with a pleasing calmness; it is mostly the material martyrdom, rather than the mental struggle, that has been depicted in such works. And if the subjects are rarely such as can interest them, is it true that they can appreciate the art? The visitors to our galleries may and do bow down to names, and affect a pleasure where they are told they ought to feel it; because, as the Vicar's son was taught, "it is the fashion to praise Pietro Perugino." But this is the last thing to be desired, and one emotion of genuine love and admiration more to be wished for than all this gotup admiration. Let me not be misunderstood, however. Let me not be thought to depreciate the true and noble works of the old masters. Would that our age could produce such, in their rarest and highest qualities-produce such, really in harmony with the feelings of our age and generation! No, it is the cant of false admiration that I contend against, the cant of pretending to love, and admire, and understand that which we know must be wholly unintelligible to the multitude, and to a knowledge of which they must be led up step by step, if at all.

Now, in order to cover all these changes and deteriorations of works noble and glorious at first, and which have a majesty even in their decay, a false theory has been invented and maintained, "that pictures improve by time," improve vastly as they get a certain quality called tone by dirt and varnish. Many a choice work has been thus improved before its time by ignorant and impudent pretenders. I pray you do not believe in this theory. Do not be lieve that the picture we see to-day is equal to what it was when it left the painter's easel. He knew best that conceived the work, that thought it into form, whose cunning hand traced it, who fetched it from the deeps of his own heart, and fashioned its feelings into order in his active brain. He knew best what the work should be. He considered it, and pronounced it finished; and it is not to be imagined that he left his own choice handiwork to time and chance to complete. Had it been necessary to give his work the tone and hue of age, could he not have done that which the commonest picture-vamper is able to perform, who gives with ease the true patina to his manufactured Titians and second-hand Rafaelles. No; a little allowance for change the painter might have made; but, believe me, he of old-as our own painters of to-daywished his picture to be seen at once to the best advantage, and I have no doubt that we should admire much more intensely and value more highly those masterpieces of past artists, could we see them as they first left the hands of the mighty geniuses who produced them.

There is a double aim in all collections of art-the one the accumulation of rare and choice works only, for the pleasure and improvement they afford; the other historical, to illustrate the growth of art and the succession of artists, either generally, or, as in the case I am advocating, in a particular country. When could such a collection as would illustrate British Art be made so well as at present? The art (except as to one or two scattered pupils of foreign painters) is scarcely more than a century old; and ancient men still among us have

lived in the memory of its first professors. A series of their works could be readily obtained; the genuineness of their pictures undoubtedly determined; their mode of practice is well known. The presentation pictures required from its members on their election to the honors of the Royal Academy is in itself almost the skeleton of such a collection. Mr. Vernon's gift would swell its proportions, Mr. Turner's largely aid it; and now Mr. Sheepshanks, denying himself the pleasure of their daily contemplation, has nobly given up the whole of his collection during his lifetime, not to form an exclusive Sheepshanks Gallery, but to form part of a National Gallery of Art, part of such a series as I am desirous of seeing gathered together while time and opportunity allow, and for which purpose a small annual grant from the State would abundantly suffice.

A collection of British pictures, if made, would have to include both works in oil and works in water-colors. Nor would it be perfect unless there were added to it such sketches and drawings as serve to illustrate the mode in which a painter thinks out his work, the sketches he makes before commencing his labors, and the studies which assist him in its progress to completion.

Now as to water-color painting, nothing has yet been done to gather together a permanent public collection of that art in which England stands unrivaled, and which Englishmen are at least allowed to have entirely originated. It is within our own century that, in its present condition, it has arisen; almost with the men of our own day and who are our own contemporaries. True it is that the master-spirit who gave it birth has passed away, the artist to whom of all others it is most indebted; but in dying he has rendered it still more obligatory on the State to honor the art he commenced-for, with that feeling which we have seen the love of art engenders, the desire to enable others to partake of its pleasures, Turner left by his will to the nation the most complete and valuable series of sketches, drawings, and pictures, ever produced by one man, so that in this one collection is contained the history of an art, its birth, growth, and meridian splendor; and it really requires but little trouble to gather round this centre the labors of Turner's rivals and competitors, in order to form a complete history of an episode in art, to do a just tribute of honor to our own artists, and at the same time to ourselves as a people.

With the oil-pictures which Mr. Sheepshanks has given to the nation there is a small, yet interesting, series of drawings and studies. Such works at present have not the same attraction for the public as pictures, but the time may come when they will prove perhaps of equal interest. Who would not desire to observe the first dawnings of talent, the growth of art-power in a man of genius. And here will be found the means of such observation. One frame contains the drawings of Edwin Landseer in his earliest childhood; another, one of those rapid yet complete productions of his mature age. The growth of a thought also into a complete work-the studies that preceded its completion, the changes that it underwent in progress-how interesting to all who will enter upon their consideration! Such will be found here by Callcott, Wilkie, Cope, Mulready, and others. Should we neglect to increase such a collection now, when ample means for forming it are at hand, we may have to regret hereafter, and to obtain at a far higher cost, a far less perfect series than can now be readily formed. The value of these studies has always been felt by the true appreciator of the artist. The drawings of Rafaelle and Michael Angelo are as costly as their other works; hundreds have been paid for a single genuine drawing of the former master. Such works will often be found to contain a greater freshness, a purer feeling, a more facile elegance than the labors whose completion they served to forward. How much of study, how much of labor, a picture has cost the artist, he alone knows; something of it such studies may serve to indicate. The world has ever been too ready to impute every thing to the inspiration of genius, and to overlook the truth that, however inspired, he who would win fame must

"Scorn delights, and live laborious days;"

and that when we see a noble picture, we see not the labor of the artist, but the result of that labor.

Architectural Conditions of the Sheepshanks Gallery.

Various conditions had to be observed

First, the greatest possible security for the works against fire, as well as from improper exposure to sunlight, to bad air, and to atmospheric influences.

Secondly, the best possible arrangements for the display and lighting of the pictures; and this also with a view to providing for opening the gallery to the public at night, so that the industrial classes who are actively employed in the day might have the means of visiting the galleries and enjoying the pictures in these their only leisure hours; and,

Thirdly, the pictures, being all of a cabinet size, were to be hung near the eye, and suitable provision was to be made for their convenient inspection by the public.

Many other conditions had to be attended to, such as the thorough warming and ventilation of the apartments, the best mode of preventing accumulations of dust, &c. Added to this, while the work was to be sufficiently solid and substantial, it was to be erected rapidly, in order to receive the pictures as soon as possible, and with no expense that could possibly be avoided.

The gallery provided to fulfill these conditions has been successfully constructed under the direction of Capt. Fowke, R. E., and you have all had an opportunity of inspecting it. It is almost thoroughly fire-proof, and with every provision for warmth and ventilation. It contains, in addition to the four rooms forming the picture-gallery, four rooms below of equal dimensions, for the display of other art-collections belonging to the public, of which the Department has charge. The arrangements for the security and proper display of the pictures, and the lighting both by day and night, are considered adequate and satisfactory, and the whole has been erected at a cost of 4,500l.

Without any great outlay of public money, it has enabled us to make a series of careful experiments, both as to fire-proof construction, proper proportions and modes of lighting, warming, and ventilation, which will be extremely val uable in prospect of these grander galleries, which must shortly be provided— valuable whether as warnings against failure or assurances of success; in view of which I now proceed to explain, as briefly as possible, some of the results attained in the construction of the present building.

It is well known that the varnished surface of an oil picture forms a sort of imperfect mirror, and unless the light is arranged with proper reference to the position of the spectator in viewing the picture, he is prevented from seeing the painting by an unpleasant glitter formed by the imperfect reflection of the source of light upon its surface, as the window or the gas-jet, for instance. This would be made quite clear to any one who, standing before a picture where this glitter obtrudes itself, would take down the work and substitute a true mirror in its stead, when he would at once see a perfect reflection of the window or other source of light. Now the first question to be considered is, how to place the source of light so that the spectator, when at a convenient point for viewing the picture, is not annoyed with this imperfect reflection on its surface; and when a gallery is to be built for the reception of works of art, this should be one of the paramount considerations. This would appear to be an abstruse question, since we so seldom see a thoroughly well-lighted gallery; it is, however, by no means the case; the laws of vision are absolute, and are clearly defined, and the exact places where all these reflections will be troublesome can as easily be laid down by lines, as the plans and dimensions of the galleries themselves.

But there is another condition to which it is necessary to refer in galleries which, like the Sheepshanks Gallery, are lighted from the top (the most usual method, from the much greater hanging-space obtained). One of the first requisites is sufficiency of light, but as the simplest way to remedy the evil of reflection is to diminish the size of the opening for the admission of light, and raise the roof, this expedient is often resorted to, (the more that it accords well with the grandiose views of the architect.) It thus happens that in shunning one evil we fall into another; by raising the roof, it is true that the place of the reflection is raised above the usual hanging line of the pictures, but alas! they are as in a well where but few rays of light can penetrate.

[These principles are illustrated by reference to the Galleries of Munich and Paris.

The Sheepshanks Gallery is provided with an outer skylight on the roof, and an inner light of ground glass below it. This obviates all danger from leakages, affords ample opportunity for abundant ventilation, and screens the pictures from the direct rays of the sun, so that it is only in the extreme brightness and heat of summer that the blinds need be used.

The first thing to be demanded in a National Gallery of Art, whether of foreign or British pictures, should be the perfect adaptation of the place to their arrangement and display. This is hardly the work of an architect. It should be determined by a painter. The necessary proportions, the height and situation of the lights, the widths, the heights to which the pictures should be hung, the proportions of different compartments or cabinets as adapted to the pictures they are to contain, should be settled first, and by or in conjunction with the painter, and the block, thus absolutely and unchangeably determined, may then be given up to the architect to treat in conformity with the rules of his art. There can be no doubt that by such means a nobler, because more characteristic, structure would arise, than by the usual method of neglecting the utilities and considering the elevation and decoration before the purpose. And if not, are not the pictures the object, to which architecture is wholly secondary. In building a palace, exterior grandeur and interior magnificence are as much requisites as its uses for habitation or residence; such may be given up wholly to the architect; here he may revel in the display of his art, and carry the decoration to any extent that is not inconsistent with the requisite amount of contrast;-but in a gallery for art, the art is the one thing to which all should be subservient; the pictures, in this case, are not meant to serve as subsidiary decorations to the architecture, but are themselves the jewels for which the building forms only a fitting and suitable casket.

The space already spoken of beneath the Sheepshanks Gallery, and which is. included in the cost which I have named, is divided into four rooms, intended to provide for the secure display of some of the choicest treasures of the Museum of Ornamental Art. It was necessary here also to obtain the greatest amount of light that was consistent with security, and it will be found that the square contents of the windows by which it is lighted form considerably more than half the contents of the walls in which they are inserted.

In constructing a building of two stories, so as to be as far as possible fireproof, it was necessary to have a floor impervious to its attacks, and the one adopted for the new galleries fulfills this condition. It is formed of wroughtiron joists, filled in with concrete, on the top of which, embedded in cement, is laid a surface of tiles. Thus all danger of fire extending from below is obviated, and, thanks to the excellent manufacture of tiles by our countryman, Mr. Minton, a floor is obtained, rich, yet sober in color, and remarkably hard and free from dust, very little being observable after those days on which the gallery has had its most thronged attendances. It is also easily cleaned, and requires no sort of covering, such as matting, cocoa fibre, or carpet, which retain large quantities of dust. The color thus obtained is very agreeable, and gives a feeling of completeness and richness to the Gallery, notwithstanding the floor is naked.

I may say a word as to the arrangements for warming. These are beneath the Yorkshire stone floor of the lower rooms. A large volume of air drawn from without the building, and which it is intended to strain from impurities, is thrown in a continuous, yet easily regulated stream, into both the upper and lower rooms, while an extracting shaft and other provisions are made to carry off the vitiated air, particularly that arising from the combustion of the gas at night. It has been found that dry heated air at once ascends to the top of the building, but that, if moderately humid, it distributes itself equally throughout the apartment. With this view, great care is taken, in heating the air, to retain a proper degree of humidity, and not to dry it in the heating process. The result has been found to be that the ventilation, during the extreme heat of the past summer, was such as to keep the gallery, even when crowded with visitors, below the temperature of the day-time in the shade, and agreeably cool at night: the only faulty point as to the winter heating being that the places for the admission of the warmed air are found to be confined too much to one place in each apartment, and would be better distributed much more throughout each room.