panion, 37. Child Sleeping, ib. Ruysdael. Waterfall, 29. Land- scape, 57. Northcote. A Man with a Hawk, Sacchi. Port. of a Lady, 26. St. Boors Merry-making, 38. Suenredam. A Cathedral, 26. Poelemberg. Nymph and Satyr, Teniers. A Fair, 57. 25. Another, 76. Boor's Paul Veronese. A Cardinal bless-Tintoretto. A Portrait, 55. The Potiphar's wife, 57. Poussin, N. Dance of Baccha- nals, 15. Education of Bacchus, Reynolds. Death of Cardinal Venus Rising from the Sea, anderwerf. Judgment of Paris, 38. Vandyck. Portrait of Gevartius, Velasquez. Prince of the Asturias, Portrait of Himself and his three Watteau. Fête Champetre, and Four Ecclesiastical Subjects, 94. Wilkie. Ale-house door, 7. Break. Silenus, 134. Rape of Proser-Wilson. Villa of Maecenas, 36. 136. MR. ANGERSTEIN'S COLLECTION. Ou! Art, lovely Art! "Balm of hurt minds, chief nourisher in life's feast, great Nature's second course!" Time's treasurer, the unsullied mirror of the mind of man! Thee we invoke, and not in vain, for we find thee here retired in thy plenitude and thy power! The walls are dark with beauty; they frown severest grace. The eye is not caught by glitter and varnish ; we see the pictures by their own internal light. This is not a bazaar, a raree-show of art, a Noah's ark of all the Schools, marching out in endless procession; but a sanctuary, a holy of holies, collected by taste, sacred to fame, enriched by the rarest products of genius. For the number of pictures, Mr. Angerstein's is the finest gallery, perhaps, in the world. We B feel no sense of littleness: the attention is never distracted for a moment, but concentrated on a few pictures of first-rate excellence. Many of these chefs-d'œuvre might occupy the spectator for a whole morning; yet they do not interfere with the pleasure derived from each other-so much consistency of style is there in the midst of variety! We know of no greater treat than to be admitted freely to a Collection of this sort, where the mind reposes with full confidence in its feelings of admiration, and finds that idea and love of conceivable beauty, which it has cherished perhaps for a whole life, reflected from every object around it. It is a cure (for the time at least) for low-thoughted cares and uneasy passions. We are abstracted to another sphere: we breathe empyrean air; we enter into the minds of Raphael, of Titian, of Poussin, of the Caracci, and look at nature with their eyes; we live in time past, and seem identified with the permanent forms of things. The business of the world at large, and its pleasures, appear a vanity and an impertinence. What signify the hubbub, the shifting scenery, the fantoccini figures, the folly, the idle fashions without, when compared with the solitude, the silence, the speaking looks, the unfading forms within?Here is the mind's true home. The contemplation of truth and beauty is the proper object for which we were created, which calls forth the most like intense desires of the soul, and of which it never tires. A capital print-shop (Molteno's or Colnaghi's) is a point to aim at in a morning's walk-a relief and satisfaction in the motley confusion, the littleness, the vulgarity of common life but a print-shop has but a mean, cold, meagre, petty appearance, after coming : out of a fine Collection of Pictures. We want the size of life, the marble flesh, the rich tones of nature, the diviner expanded expression. Good prints are, no doubt, better than bad pictures'; or prints, generally speaking, are better than pictures; for we have more prints of good pictures than of bad ones: yet they are for the most part but hints, loose memorandums, outlines in little of what the painter has done. How often, in turning over a number of choice engravings, do we tantalise ourselves by thinking "what a head that must be,”—in wondering what colour a piece of drapery is of, green or black,-in wishing, in vain, to know the exact tone of the sky in a particular corner of the picture! Throw open the folding-doors of a fine Collection, and you see all you have desired realised at a blow-the bright originals starting up in their own proper shape, clad with flesh and blood, and teeming with the first conception of the painter's mind! The disadvantage of pictures is that they cannot be multiplied to any extent, like books or prints; but this, in another point of view, operates probably as an advantage, by making the sight of a fine original picture an event so much the more memorable, and the impression so much the deeper. A visit to a genuine Collection is like going a pilgrimage-it is an act of devotion performed at the shrine of Art! It is as if there were but one copy of a book in the world, locked up in some curious casket, which, by special favour, we had been permitted to open, and peruse (as we must) with unaccustomed relish. The words would, in that case, leave stings in the mind of the reader, and every letter appear of gold. The ancients, before the invention of printing, were nearly in the same situation, with respect to books, that we are with regard to pictures; and at the revival of letters, we find the same unmingled satisfaction, or fervid enthusiasm, manifested in the pursuit or the discovery of an old manuscript, that connoisseurs still feel in the purchase and possession of an antique cameo, or a fine specimen of the Italian school of painting. Literature was not then cheap and vulgar, nor was there what is called a reading public; and the pride of intellect, like the pride of art, or the pride of birth, was confined to the privileged few! We sometimes, in viewing a celebrated Collection, meet with an old favourite, a first love in such matters, that we have not seen for many years, which greatly enhances the de |