be transferred to their proper places in the schools to which they belong. Mr. Wynn Ellis, by the terms of his bequest, showed a true love of art and a just appreciation of the object of a great public collection of pictures.

The principal duty assigned to the Trustees and Director is, the due preservation of the pictures committed by the nation to their charge. This, of course, includes the obligation to see that they do not suffer injury from improper treatment, and especially from injudicious restorations and over-cleaning. numerable instances might be mentioned of irretrievable damage done to pictures of inestimable value by these fatal processes. On the whole, the National Gallery, especially of late years, may compare very favourably in this respect with foreign collections. The treatment, to which the great series by Reubens and other pictures in the Louvre were subjected some years ago, is a matter of notoriety, and caused the utmost grief to lovers of art in France. In Italy the havoc in picture galleries, public and private, caused by the restorer and picture-cleaner is perfectly appalling. The German Museums have, unfortunately, not escaped. Some of the National Gallery pictures, which have passed through the skilful hands of Mr. William Dyer, under the vigilant supervision of the Director, are examples of what judicious cleaning and renovation should be. We may specially instance the Raising of Lazarus,' by Sebastian del Piombo. It required no little courage to place this renowned masterpiece in the hands of any restorer. It was confidently asserted that much of it, alleged to be the work of West, would come away if any attempt were made to remove the coat of dirt and the discoloured varnishes which obscured the colour and detracted from the original splendour of the picture. The operation was not undertaken without the most mature deliberation, and without the sanction of the most eminent painters of the day. The result has been in in every respect satisfactory. Even the watchful and captious race of art-critics has had no fault to find. West's supposed restorations have not disappeared, details of exquisite beauty before unseen have been brought to light, and we now enjoy as much of the original richness and harmony of colour of this marvellous work as time, after the lapse of three centuries and a half, has spared.

It is, however, of the greatest importance to prevent the necessity of cleaning and restoring pictures, and this can only be done-in London at least-by protecting them with glass. This the Trustees and Director of the National Gallery have endeavoured to do, and there is now scarcely a work of any value in the collection which is not so protected. There are,

no doubt, objections to the use of glass, principally arising from the reflection of surrounding objects, which interfere with the full enjoyment and appreciation of the picture, and with its examination by the artist and connoisseur. But the advantages far exceed the objections. If the picture is to be copied, the student can in most cases, on application to the Keeper obtain the removal of the glass; and as regards the public in general, we believe that in their eyes the glass adds to the beauty and value of the painting. Any one may convince himself of the necessity of the precaution who will wipe the glass with a white pocket-handkerchief on the close of a day when the galleries have been crowded. The noxious matter found upon it would have been deposited upon the picture itself if not so protected, and in course of time, as it accumulated, would have had to be removed by some injurious process of cleaning.

Fault has been in some quarters found with the Trustees, for paying what are considered exorbitant and unreasonable prices for pictures; but such complaints have never come from the public in general, nor have they been raised in the House of Commons by persons of any weight and standing. We have shown that no comparison can be fairly made between prices given five-and-twenty years ago and at the present time. In the first place there is greatly increased competition, both on the part of foreign Governments and private individuals. Berlin and the Louvre are bidding against us. Even the Belgian Government has recently paid 8oool. for a dubious Rembrandt, whilst the city of Antwerp has acquainted for its museum, at equally high prices, a portrait by the same master, and one by Frans Hals. A full-length of a girl by the latter painter, whose works not many years ago were little known and esteemed out of his native city, was lately purchased, we have heard, from a charitable institution at Haarlem by a lady of the Rothschild family for 10,000l. Two members of the same wealthy family acquired for 72,000l., the three most precious pictures by Rubens in the Blenheim collection. At the sale of that collection by public auction the life-sized portrait of Anne of Austria by the same master fetched 3700 guineas, and his Venus and Adonis' was bought in as 7200 guineas. The Duc d'Aumale is said to have paid 25,000l. for the little Dudley Raphael—the Three Graces.' Not a year ago 170,000 francs were subscribed by four or five lovers of the arts in Paris to purchase six pictures by old Italian and Flemish masters, and to prevent them leaving France by presenting them to the Louvre. They were of so inferior a

character, and of such doubtful authenticity, that the Directors of that great Gallery felt constrained to refuse the gift! In the second place, the supply of really important pictures is daily diminishing, and must in the course of time come to an end, whilst the rigorous, and in many respects foolish, measures taken by the Italian Government to prevent the exportation of works of art from Italy, renders it now very difficult to obtain them from that country. There is scarcely a painting of any true value in a private collection in England or elsewhere which is not well-known, and the appearance of which in the auction room is not eagerly locked for. The halcyon days of the collector when masterpieces could be picked up for nothing' have passed away. It is true that Raphaels, Michael Angelos, and Titians, are yearly discovered, and introduced to the public authenticated by the certificates of foreign-principally Italian-Academies of Art. Those who doubt their genuineness are anathema. The late Mr. Morris Moore, the most irascible and reckless of connoisseurs, did not hesitate to accuse, in pamphlets widely distributed, men of the highest character and position, who ventured to doubt whether his picture of Apollo and Marsyas was by the hand of Raphael himself, of the gravest crimes.*

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It must further be borne in mind that a picture bought for a great national collection, such as the National Gallery, has a relative as well as a specific value. A gap is to be filled up, an important master is to be represented, or a school has to be illustrated, and an opportunity which presents itself of doing either of these things may never occur again. The Trustees, therefore, must be prepared to pay a larger sum for a picture than, under ordinary circumstances, they would consider its fair value. In our opinion there is no reason to complain that too much money has been spent upon our national collection; on the contrary, we are disposed to think that more might have been expended with advantage. All true lovers of art, and those who are desirous of provding for the instruction of and of stimulating our students, and of encouraging public taste, by

*This little picture which, beautiful as it no doubt is, is now admitted by all competent connoisseurs not to be by Raphael, was purchased by the Louvre for 8000l., Mr. Morris Moore making a condition that it should be attributed in the collection to that master-a condition which, in the interest of Art, to say nothing of truth, ought not to have been accepted. The picture would have been an ornament to the National Gallery; but its owner, owing to imaginary grievances against the three successive Directors and some of the Trustees, who were the objects of his most virulent denunciations and of grave accusations, which could only have originated in a disordered brain, absolutely refused to sell it to them. The price paid for it by the Directors of the Louvre was, we think, above its real value.

adding to the National Gallery the best examples of the foremost masters, will not cease to regret that Mr. Gladstone's Government did not act upon the recommendation of the Trustees and Director, and upon the urgent representation of the Royal Academicians, and add to the two great pictures purchased from the Duke of Marlborough the matchless full-length portraits by Rubens of himself and his family, and of Helen Fourmont a class of work which the National Gallery does not possess, and which is essential to its completeness. They have now passed, like so many art-treasures, into the possession of the Rothschild family at Paris, and the opportunity of obtaining such things will never occur again. We believe that Lord Beaconsfield, with that wise liberality which distinguished him, would not have hesitated to acquire these two pictures for the nation, nor have we the slighest doubt that he would have deserved the gratitude, and received the approval of the country in so doing.

But we must bring our remarks to a close. We have sought to convey to our readers some idea of the growth of the National Gallery during the last twenty-five years, and of the manner in which this priceless collection of pictures, forming no inconsiderable portion of England's wealth, and adding not a little to her renown, is cared for and administered by those to whom the country has confided it. If such an institution is an indication, as we believe it to be, of the civilization and culture of a nation, we may be justly proud of it We may envy the masterpieces af Rembrandt which adorn the Hermitage and the Museum of Cassel; we may be entranced by the magic effect of the blaze of colour from the canvases of Titian and Carpaccio on the walls of the Venice Academy; and we may be fascinated by the exquisite grace and matchless drawing of the altar-pieces of Fra Bartolommeo and Andrea del Sarto in the Pitti and Uffizi. We cannot hope to obtain such works, which form part of the glories of the countries to which they belong. Nor is it desirable that we should seek to rival the Louvre in its endless display of pictures of all sorts and kinds. But our National Gallery excels all these renowned collections in the variety and genuineness of the works of painters of all countries it contains, in their judicious selection, and in the materials it furnishes for the illustration and history of the various epochs and schools of painting, and consequently for the instruction it affords. Nor is there any foreign Gallery so much frequented by students, or so generally visited and enjoyed by persons of all classes.

ART. V.-I. Fifteenth and Sixteenth Annual Reports of the

Deputy Master of the Mint.

House of Parliament.

1884, 1885. Presented to the

By the Rt.

2. Journal of the Institute of Bankers. (The probable results of an increase in the Purchasing Power of Gold. Hon. Geo. J. Goschen, M. P.) May, 1883.

3. Essays in Finance.

London. 1886.

By Robert Giffen.

Second series.

4. Letter of the Secretary of the Treasury to the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Washington. March, 1886.

THE

HE subject, which we propose to investigate, is the difficult and thorny question, whether or not the Standard of Value has recently altered its position relatively to all things purchased through its means; and we may fitly commence our remarks with a reference to the work of that public department to whose charge is entrusted the production of our British coin. Ever since the office of Deputy-Master of the Mint has been committed to Mr. Fremantle, he has been at great pains to render his Reports, attractive as well as instructive. Thus the Sixteenth Report, that for 1885, contains some very interesting remarks on the method by means of which the cast medals, of beautiful design, such as are among the most precious relics of medieval Italian Art, may be produced. Mr. Fremantle has called attention to this process, easy of application in capable hands, cheap in comparison with modern tasteless substitutes, in the hope that thus an art may be revived which at the present time has degenerated to a manufacture. This attention to the artistic work of the Mint has not diverted consideration from other and more important matters. The Report contains estimates of the production of gold and silver in Australia and New Zealand from the earliest Colonial records obtainable; and also the documents relating to the monetary convention between France, Belgium, Italy and Greece, signed at Paris in November and December, 1885.

These last papers refer to the side of the question with which we are immediately concerned. The reports from our Australian Colonies relate to the production of the precious metals, the documents signed at Paris refer to their employment. Both these points, production and employment, are of the highest importance, as determining price, and it is the price of the Standard of Value-that is to say, its command of the goods purchased through its means, which we propose to consider. The question is; Is it not well that this command of goods