Philip and Mary, then come Essex, Sir Christopher Hatton, Raleigh and his wife; and a little removed the finest Holbein in England, the portrait of Sir Henry Guilford. Other courtly personages there are, too numerous for us to name, so we must pass on to one who was the great patroness of learning in that age of genius, we mean Lucy Harrington, Countess of Bedford, and she is appropriately surrounded by Ben Jonson and Shakespeare, Fletcher, and other persons of less note.

James the First is supported by his son Henry, and his daughter the Queen of Bohemia. Councillors and courtiers are at hand, Lord Bacon and Wootton, Falkland and Villiers, and Sir Charles Cavendish.

The era of Charles the First receives its illustration principally from a glorious collection of Vandykes. There is a family group of the king, his wife and children; while around are Prince Rupert and Prince Maurice, Hamilton, Huntley, Newcastle, Carlisle, and others. Then come all the beauties of the court, as well known through the pencil of the artist as from the pages of Clarendon. Vandyke himself is present, and near him is Inigo Jones; then come the poets, Waller, and Suckling, and others; and after the Cavaliers, come the Roundheads, the stern Protector, with Hampden and Pim, and some more.

Let us now cross the gallery. What Vandyke has done for the reign of Charles the First, Lely has done for that of his son. There we find the king and his wife Catherine of Braganza, and all the beautiful women who adorned, though they did not dignify the court of Charles II. Then come, James the II., with Monmouth and Lord William Russell; William and Mary, with Bentinck, and a few others; and so we pass to the Augustan age of Anne, where Prior, and Swift, and Pope, and Gay, and Lady Mary Wortley Montague claim attention, and there too are the courtly Addison, and the great masters of the drama, Congreve, and Steele, and Vanburgh, while glorious John Dryden is next his publisher, old Jacob Tonson.

George the First is supported by Harley and Walpole. His son and Queen Caroline, with her favourite, Lady Sundon, follow, and both the Pretenders have a place. Then there

are Pelham, and Chatham, and Lyttleton, with Thomson the poet and some others.

The reign of George III. may be said to conclude the series, which, with the exception of her present Majesty, does not deal with living celebrities. In these we have names that still sound in the ears of many living -warriors, statesmen, poets, and geniuses that have but recently passed away from amongst us and whose features many a spectator will remember. Here are with the King, his ministers, Pitt, and Fox, North, and Bute; and round one of the autocrats of literature, Mr. Murray, are grouped Southey, Coleridge, Byron, Moore, and Campbell, Gifford, and Lockhart. Johnson, Boswell, Gibbon, and Hume are there also, and so are Scott and Burns. Reynolds, Wilson, and Gainsborough, as the chiefs of painting, and Garrick, Kemble, and Mrs. Siddons, as chiefs of the stage, have their respective groupings of minor stars about them.

Passing to the southern gallery, we find the pictures by the ancient masters arranged by Mr. Scharf, junior.. On one side are the works of the Italian and Spanish school, on the opposite those of the schools of Germany, Flanders, and England. They range over a period of three centuries, ending at 1700. This gallery is divided into three departments, commencing at the portion next the transept, which is appropriated to the earliest specimens of the art, beginning with the fresco paintings in the baths of Titus, and the catacombs. It would exceed our limits to enter into any details of this gallery. We havo each series forming a complete and beautiful illustration.

The German, Flemish, and English schools begin with Van Eyck, and comprise paintings by Matsys, Rubens, Vandyke, Holbein, Teniers, Rembrandt, Kneller, and many others. The Schools of Italy and Spain commence with the works of Angelico da Fiesole, and include those of Perugino, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Titian, Velasques, Murillo, and many others. Two pictures we cannot pass without notice, one at the upper end of the gallery, Leighton's picture of the triumphal procession of Cimabue's Madonna; the other at the lower end, a fine equestrian portrait of Charles I.

The northern gallery commences from the period at which the southern ends the beginning of the eighteenth century. This is the gallery of modern paintings, and it is divided into three saloons, separated by two bays or chapels, and arranged by Mr. Augustus Egg. A portion of the first saloon is principally occupied with portraits by early English painters, with the works of Wootton and Hoare, till we come to Hogarth-then come the paintings of Hudson, and his great pupil Reynolds, and next to these are some of the master-pieces of Gainsborough. In the bay adjoining are modern Continental pictures; amongst which are some of the finest of Canaletti's architectural paintings, which were executed by him during his stay in England. In the central saloon the state of British art during the early period of the Royal Academy is admirably illustrated by the best works of Wilson, Gainsborough, Reynolds, West, Lawrence, Wilkie, Etty, Stothard, and others. The second bay is devoted to the works of the more recent Continental artists, such as Vernet, Delaroche, and Scheffer. Thence we pass into the third saloon, where the great living English artists have found a place for their productions. Here we have nearly every modern picture of merit to be found in England. Both the Landseers, Eastlake, Maclise, Mulready, Stanfield, Roberts, Hunt, and Millais, and many another name familiar to every ear, contribute to the beauty and the interest of this saloon, wherein one may effectively understand and study the state of English art as it now exists.

At the western end of the building is a gallery, in which Mr. Holmes has arranged the water-colour drawings of England, a school for which our nation is pre-eminent above all other schools in the world. The collection is very extensive, and exhibits the progress of the art from the drawings of Cosens down to the present day, including the master-pieces of Cox, Cattermole, Taylor, Harding, Stanfield, Roberts, Prout and Turner.

The engravings will occupy a room on the south side of the transept, while the gallery round its northern end will be appropriated to Photographs.

And now let us say a few words

upon the results, artistic, social, and moral, that are likely to flow from this great undertaking. We know experimentally what the great industrial exhibitions have done for the world; we know that they are not to be considered merely as gigantic displays whose vastness and richness only dazzled the eyes of the beholders, and gratified the pride of the contributors, and then passed away, leaving no trace behind them save in the memory. Far otherwise has it been. We believe that every branch of industrial and inventive art has been advanced and improved; that artizans have been incited, educated, and impelled forward by what they have seen and studied in the various departments of these mighty schools, and we have one lasting evidence that such impressions will not be suffered to wear out of the national mind of England in that almost fabulously magnificent structure which has arisen at Sydenham. What all these have done for the merely industrial development we may fairly expect that the forthcoming Manchester exhibition will do for the higher departments of art; especially for the fine arts. The latter, indeed, seems a fitting sequence to the other. The fine arts should ever follow in the path of the industrial arts; when the necessities of life are fully supplied, then man has time to devote to those things that ameliorate and civilize;. 'tis so with individuals-'tis so with communities. If the British nation has already pushed forward the useful to its highest state of development, we may surely assert that they are now ripe for the study of the fine arts, and we may expect from them present progress and ultimate development in that department also. We have no belief in the oft repeated assertion that the fine arts will not flourish as a national production in England. The great names of the English school from Reynolds to Turner, though that school may be pronounced to be still but in its infancy, prove the contrary. For the fostering, and elevating, and maturing of that school we look especially to this great undertaking. It is a work worthy of the men that have wrought at and elevated the industrial arts of England. Who shall say what in fluence the display of the noblest

specimens of every school of painting in the world-for such may well be congregated at Manchester-may exercise upon many a youthful artist who shall now be able to study and examine them? And so what we have said of painting is equally applicable to sculpture. But we may look to influences more largely diffused and beneficial than those that are directly and solely artistic. We mean the influences social and moral which such displays are likely to exercise upon the masses of the people. The English artizan classes are hard working and highly intellectual, and in this latter respect they are markedly different from the rural population. But the pursuits that bring the intellect into activity, do not necessarily render the man moral.

Unfortunately it is frequently the reverse, and the intellectual food that is most ready at hand for the operatives in a large town such as Manchester or Liverpool, is but too generally unhealthy, if not morally poisonous. Now the contemplation of the beautiful in its various forms and expressions, such as a great gallery of painting and sculpture affords, can scarcely fail to elevate and civilize the human mind. It is with the Muse of painting and sculpture as with her sisters of poetry and melody, they

are

all handmaidens and ministrants of God to evoke the nobler and better feelings of our nature, to raise us from all that is mean, immoral and degrading. We do not say this as words of course we have a confiding and earnest faith in what we assert. These influences are as potent for good to-day as they were in the days of Saul, and so we look forward with hope and confidence to the moral effect upon the thousands and tens of thousands of our humbler but not less precious people who shall day by day resort to a place where their hearts shall be filled with those "things of beauty," which in the well-applied words of Keats are 66 a joy for ever," a joy that every human soul can feel, and that no soul can feel without being the better for the feeling.

The instruction to be derived from this great collection of Art-Treasures will bear upon many branches of learning, but to no small extent it must, from the skilful arrangement and classification of the pictures to

which we have alluded, help to illustrate English history and English life. What a series of portraits, for instance, do the private collections of England afford for centuries past, up to the very times in which we live. What an insight into the domestic life and manners of a people do their arts and ornaments present. In contemplating these things, one, as it were, makes a familiar acquaintance with both the form and fashion of men who have, heretofore, been to him but the shadowy and intangible conceptions of his mind.

are

That the forthcoming exhibition may not fail in the production of any good that it is capable of being made to produce, is of course the earnest wish of the committee. For this purpose there are two things which we deem of importance. The first is tó provide adequately for the accommodation of the large masses of people of every grade and class, who, if we are to judge from the experience of past exhibitions, likely to resort to Manchester. By adequate accommodation we mean, first, cheapness and facility of access. This is a matter that a little good management with the various railway companies can secure; an accommodation of more difficulty will be that of providing lodging for visitors on reasonable terms. Upon this we believe will, in no small degree, depend the success of the exhibition, not only as an instructive agent, but as a remunerative scheme. If by judicious arrangements persons are enabled to spend twice the time in Manchester for the same expense, that, if everything be exorbitantly dear, they could afford to do, it is manifest that their opportunities of instruction will be doubled, and the profits on daily tickets will be doubled also. We shall not venture to prescribe the mode of effecting this desirable object, as we feel the committee know better than any others the local capabilities with which they have to deal; but we may observe that the numerous small towns that lie around the locality of the build ing at the distance of a very few miles such as Altringham, Bowden, and others and the readiness with which they are reached by the several railways and omnibuses, afford the means of increasing the accommo

dation for visitors upon reasonable terms, provided some previous arrangements be made by the committee. Undoubtedly this object has heretofore been but very partially accomplished. The prices of apartments at the Dublin exhibition were beyond what they should have been; in London they were very high; while in Paris they were monstrous. Let Manchester men solve this difficulty, and by enabling the supply to keep pace with the demand, render it possible for artists and artizans from the remote parts of the kingdom to pass a week at Manchester in the acquisition of knowledge and the improvement of the mind and the taste, without spending what should support them at home for a month.

The second matter of importance will be to take care that those who come to learn, may have the means of learning. To exhibit all the objects that shall be displayed to the eye of the visitor without giving him any further information than catalogues can afford-and we admit a good catalogue is capable of teaching much -will be somewhat like turning a man without books into a garden to learn botany, or sending him out of doors at midnight to learn astronomy. The great efficient agent of instruction to be adopted is, in our judgment, the lecture-courses of lectures given on the spot, by the best men that the nation can produce, and about this there should be no mistake-courses that shall each deal with the particular subject to be treated of in a complete manner, from the elements to the perfection, so that every one shall be able to learn, and recurring again and again at stated periods throughout the time that the Exhibition shall remain open; these we believe will be the true means of making all these treasures give out all the riches that they contain.

One further good result we hope may follow from the Art-Treasures' Exhibition at Manchester. We trust it may lead the nation to see the necessity of establishing a national gallery of paintings worthy of the

country. It is neither becoming the wealth or greatness of the English people that they should be content with that thing in Trafalgar Square, as contemptible in its architecture, as it is miserable in its collection of works of art. It is not fitting that there should be nothing better in the metropolis of the empire for the public instruction. It is not fitting that foreigners should estimate the taste or the art-resources of Britain by such a thing as that. Will the public be contented to let all this galaxy at Manchester dissolve and disperse, without an effort to substitute something permanent and fine in its place? Are there no generous hearts amongst those who shall bring their pictures to Manchester for a season, to edify and delight the public, who will not also give a portion of them as a permanent gift to the nation? Are there none who may be disposed for an adequate price to sell their masterpieces to the nation, and will the nation refuse a grant for their purchase? We hope and believe that these questions would be answered in the affirmative, if the appeal or the application were made. Here, in our own city of Dublin, an effort has been made to establish a national gallery. A considerable sum of money was raised, after the Great Exhibition of 1853, as a testimonial to the public spirit and eminent public services of Mr. Dargan. That money has been appropriated by the trustees in

a

manner that they felt would be alike consonant to the feelings of Mr. Dargan, and honourable to him, towards the establishment of a national gallery here; private subscriptions have been added, and a public grant in aid. At the head of the movement are the Lord High Chancellor of Ireland and Lord Talbot de Malahide; both men who are zealous patrons of the fine arts, and the former has upon his own personal responsibility secured some fine pictures purchased in Italy. We hope that nothing shall interfere to prevent the realization of this most desirable object,

EDITORS ESOPIZED.

I never meet our gallant master of the fox-hounds-the fresh old evergreen, General Hulme-without being reminded of some of the cares and hindrances of a certain editorial friend of mine. His difficulty always is the crowd of volunteers. Our pink and well-appointed regulars, a good score of them, are really quite field enough for us without danger of riding over the hounds; but invariably there assemble at the meet (nominally to see us throw off, but in bitter practice to hinder all sport by too often heading back the fox when otherwise he would have broken out of cover) the same sort of posse of male and female equestrians as in the Pegasus-riding way overwhelm my friend the editor with their needless contributions.

Now and then, too, some Cockney horseman, in Napoleon boots and a cut-away, will volunteer a solo on his horn (stupid animal !) to the utter discomfiture of the hounds, and signal execration of old Hulme and his huntsmen. Isn't this that frequent bore, a bad poet, Mr. Editor?

with

Again, some helpless woman, her draggled skirt, will be sure to have got irrevocably in every body's way, while her skittish canterer has lamed Jangler or Wrangler, or poor old Juno. Isn't this your long-winded flowery prosaist, with her Penelopean web of tamest "True story," to be continued-no end to the chapters of possible accidents and untimely incidents?

Again, two or three schoolboys will be making a first essay (small blame to them though, and I like the boys the better for such spirit), and on their little Shetlanders nearly always get run over. These are juvenile authors, feathering their quills; perhaps a necessary evil (for the breed must be kept up), but no use for this hunt at all events, and no small care to look after.

And last of all, it must be confessed that, besides yonder awkward squad of volunteers, there can be muffs even in the elect band of these pink and

well-appointed regulars!

All pro

mise and small performance-better to look at than to go--who raise expectation only to disappoint it, and with the jauntiest of external appliances, are utterly void of pluck or genius. How should our hale, hearty old General have the tact and patience to please every body? Impossible. He won't even try to do it, if he's as wise as I take him to be.

Then, again, the same sort of thoughts as to editorial bothers and duties come into my mind when I contemplate Jem Bent, our huntsman, and his pack. The meet is periodical, and cyclical, the hounds drafted from the kennel for their individual qualities, according to the line of country to be crossed that day. Every good dog has his name and fame, his peculiarity of temperament and talent, his specialty for the cover or the run; the fox, we'll style what we huntSuccess must have all the old earths stopped beforehand, in the way of adversaries conciliated, rivals to dinner, laudatory notices exchanged, and so forth; and, depend upon it, Jem Bent has to make plaint of many a half-broke hound or lagging puppy among his pack, who will either give tongue after vermin, or ignominiously tail off.

But those characteristics above of the periodical and the cyclical hint at a nobler similitude: our editor may well be likened to that sublimest among the students, an astronomer.

Are not his chief care the monthly phases of a sphere, which to his individuality is no less than "velut inter ignes Luna minores?" Doth not the ebb or flow of the world's great tides, popular opinion and literary glory, considerably depend (according to his complacent theory) on the influence of that moon aforesaid? Must he not habitually outwatch the Bear o' nights, and be a most diligent consumer both of midnight oil and small-hours' ink? And do they not, both astronomer and editor, zealously work as hard as if all motions, earthly and heavenly, wouldn't go on just as well without them, and feel as proudly happy in