The Sun.
London, England, 1853-03-26 00:00:00

LONDON, SATURDAY, MARCH 26, 1853.

Already allusion has been cursorily made in
these columns to the pamphlet recently put for-
ward in reference to the formation and management
of a National Gallery by one of the most eminent
of our Royal Academicians. The question is of
such importance, however, that we cannot but re-
gard it as demanding at the hands of the journalist
the most careful and reiterated eonsideration.
Besides which, it must be especially borne in re-
collection, that the subject is one which appears
at length to have ripened from one of a merely
theoretical to one of a real practical charac-
ter. It has been acknowledged at last by
" the powers that be" that some change must
be brought about in reference to that confused and
inadequate institution, which is a disgrace to the
country at large, scarcely less by the indifferent
merit of the pictures collected together within its
walls than by the miserable appearance, both in-
ternal and external of its architecture. It has
come to pass after mature deliberation that the
necessity for this alteration has been recognised by
her MA.rssrr's Government. In this respect, if in
no other, the memorable enterprise of 1851 has
not been unproductive of a very considerable im-
provement. Inspired, it would seem, by the
marvels which were there effected with so much
facility, the authorities have arrived at the deter-
mination to promote the encouragement of Art in
the United Kingdom by some more rational and
comprehensive system than that hitherto in vogue
with preceding Administrations. As an earnest that
some actual change of this description is about to
be effected, the surplus of the funds accumulated
by the Great Industrial Exhibition, has already
been devoted to the purchase of a site for the new
Palace of Art ; or, in other words, for a truly National
Gallery, to be dedicated at once to the conservation
of painting, sculpture, and architecture. That site,
it is by this time tolerably well known, has been
fixed at a certain cluster of market gardens situ-
ated between Bromptom and Kensington. Re-
peatedly before this, we have taken occasion to
express our sincere regret at the precipitate selec-
tion of this particular spot for the great public
edifice about to be constructed. It were super-
fluous at this moment to do more than briefly
repeat our chagrin at this proceeding : for—be-
sides that the evil has been done beyond, we fear,
the possibility of reparation—our present object
is rather to comment on the method of arrang-
ing the proposed collection, than to pronounce
an opinion upon what might be considered the
most suitable locality for its arrangement.

Satisfied, as any rational judge of art might
readily be, under existing circumstances—that the
paintings stored up in that lamentable structure
in Trafalgar-square are altogether unworthy of ap-
pearing before the world as the pictorial treasures
of a country like Great Britain, Mr. DYCE enters
at once upon the somewhat difficult inquiry as to
what might reasonably be regarded as a " National
Collection "—taking separately into account the
manner of its formation, and the system of its
management. In expounding his views upon
these subjects he indulges overmuch, we cannot
but think, in periphrase and circumlocu-
tion. Stripping his elaborate argument,
however, of all its redundant illustrations,
we find, after a careful perusal of his pamphlet—
(everything considered, one of the most remark-
able papers upon Art ever published in England)
—that he recommends in the " formation" of the
new National Gallery, completeness, and in its "man-
agement," concentration. These two words, we
believe, constitute the gist of the whole of this
lengthened treatise submitted to the scrutiny
of the public under the form of a letter addressed
to H.R.H. the Prince Consort, by our gifted
pamphleteer. The collection, in order to be
really a National Collection, ought, according
to Mr. DYCE, to be complete, and the
management of the Gallery ought to be
concentrated. Cordially and fully do we coin-
cide in the justice of the opinion expressed
upon these two important points by this intelli-
gent and experienced Academician.
As at present constituted, the National Gallery
is a most melancholy failure both in its formation
and in its management. Viewed as a collection,
it is literally nothing better than a jumble of odds
and ends—the merest waifs and strays picked up
at random by parties incompetent to adventure
upon any such responsible task of selection.
Viewed as an institution, it is simply a disorderly
and disorganised body of clever but still (for the
most) insufficiently educated dilettanti. Something
it is, in fact, quite obvious must be done, and that,
moreover, very speedily, towards the rectification
of these evils, if we are to cherish the hope of
enabling our London Gallery to vie, in course of
time,
with the Paris Louvre, or the Berlin Royal
Museum, or the
contenting ourselliveusni
wohithPin:paceoeitmheekn.a
ofl a Instead of
masters—and even those indifferently selected—
we should, as Mr. DYcia here insists, so order the
Gallery that it should
new embrace examples of
esrpiet a'
all masters of any note whatsoever. It should, in
truth, possess, above all m
okfuelcOrtre-
pleteness. It should, in a manner,
e ther to me
plainly, illustrate the history of Art from its-com-
mencement. 1
Mr. DYoEfee s so strongly the necessity
of this, that he regards the question of the mere
excellence of the pictures as altogether subordinate

to that of their genuineness. He says (p. 19)—
and the italics are his own—" The mere genuineness
of the works is chiefly to be had regard to in the
first instance." As Mr. SOLLY had declared, as
far back as 1837, when examined before a Com-
mittee of the House of Commons on Arts and
Manufactures—" If it (the National Gallery) is
to be a complete collection, it must commence, of
course, from the time of GIOTTO and CIMABUE."
Consequently—this being admitted—" the collec-
tion must take a far wider range than it has done
hitherto," (p. 13)—it " can aim at no lower
object than to exhibit the whole development of
the art of painting ; the examples of which it
consists must, therefore, range over its whole
history" (ditto)—it ought, in fact, as Mr. DYCE
had already remarked in a previous part of his
pamphlet, to be "an institution where the learned
study art, and the unlearned enjoy it" (p. 10), an
institution where docti artis rationum intelligunt,
indocti sentiunt voluptatem. While endeavouring
to enforce the necessity of rendering the collec-
tion thus comprehensive, Mr. DYCE, we conceive,
allows himself to be carried away into the utterance
of a somewhat extravagant, not to say absurd,
illustration. This occurs in the passage when he
observes (p. 10)—" Suppose that the formation of
a collection of English dramatic poetry were in
question, what should we think or say of the
Trustees of the British Museum if they were to
decide who were the best English dramatists—
what were their best works—and to exclude from
the library all but the comparatively few produc-
tions they might happen to think desirable ?"
Agreeing heartily with the purport of Mr. DYCK'S
argument as applied to the National Gallery, in
regard to its completeness or comprehensiveness, we
must, nevertheless, object to his illustration of that
argument as a case innorespectwhatever analogous.
A Library, whether dramatic or otherwise, has faci-
lities for assuring its completeness wholly out of
the question in regard to a Gallery of Paintings.
The Bibliotheque Imperiale of Paris, the British
Museum, and the vast collection of books at the
Vatican, may each of them, without detriment to
the others, comprise the whole of the works of
&AMPERE, or of any other of the great masters
in dramatic literature ; whereas it were folly to
insist seriously upon the fact that neither the
Louvre, nor the National Gallery, nor the Royal
Museum, nor the Pinacothek, could by the merest
possibility acquire possession of all the works of
any one of the great masters in the art of paint-
ing, of BARTOLOMEO, or of Gozzonx, or of Gran-
LANDAIO. The instances are altogether different.
Howbeit, apart from this, the truth asserted by
Mr. DYCE is none the less incontrovertible. His
argument is good, though his illustration is rather
inexact and blundering. In following out that
argument he enlarges forcibly enough upon the
advantages of various kinds which could
not fail to accrue from insuring to the
National Gallery this paramount merit of com-
pleteness. He reminds us, for example, of the
benefits likely to result from our obtaining speci-
mens of the school of Bologna, as implied in that
opinion expressed by Mr.- J. LEIGH, in 1837, be-
fore the Parliamentary Committee on Arts and
Manufactures—" It is a school whose works we
are exceedingly in want of to enable us to correct
the tendency of the English style towards weak-
ness of design, effeminacy of composition, and
flauntiness of colouring." He remarks himself,
in reference to the value of the earlier schools in
the art (p. 12), after sententiously notifying the
circumstance, that painting had its adolescence as
well as its infancy and its manhood—"lf the maturity
of judgment and technical skill of later times were
wanting in its adolescent state, they were more
than compensated for by a freshness of thought
and intuition, a vivacity, a gaiety, a vividness of
impression, an innocence, simplicity, and truth-
fulness, which belong to first efforts, and which
technical imperfection tended even to develope in
greater force than the more universal aims of later
art permitted." As to the feasibility of this
scheme of forming a really complete or compre-
hensive collection of paintings for the new Na-
tional Gallery, we cannot overlook, any more than
Mr. DYCE could lose a recollection of the fact,
(p. 18) that within fifteen years from the time of
its commencement, the Royal Museum of Berlin
possessed works of all classes " from the rude
Byzantine down to productions of the last cen-
tury," to the number of very nearly twelve hun-
dred—a circumstance sufficiently encouraging and
significant.
In reference to Mr. DIVE'S project for the
future management of the National Gallery when
ultimately reorganised, we need here only remark
that it is, for many reasons, entitled to separate
and serious consideration.

The electioneering drama at Derby has come at
last to a very appropriate termination. After the
" safe man " has figured rather conspicuously on
the stage ; after the famous W. B. has assumed a
very distinguished position among our polite letter-
writers ; after the respectable FRAIL and the re-
spectable MORGAN, arcades ambo, have vied with
each other in their claims upon popular considera-
tion ; after so many delightful incidents, and still
more delightful revelations, the report has been
formally drawn up by the Committee, and, on
examination, turns out to be sufficiently explicit
and comprehensive. The results of the whole of
this elaborate and protracted inquiry are, more-
over, precisely what any reasonable observer could
alone, from the very outset, have anticipated.
Not merely is Mr. HORSFALL summarily unseated,
not merely is Mr. HnYWORTH, in his stead, declared
duly elected—but Mr. BASS has the delight of
witnessing the petition against him rejected, and
rejected, too, upon the ground that it is both vexa-
tious and frivolous. Happily we shall begin after
this to hear somewhat less frequently, we presume,
of the redoubtable FLEWKER and his confreres.
Even poor Major BERRSFORD may hope at length
to have his political merits aired not quite so re-
peatedly as of late in the columns of the public
newspapers, whether provincial at metropolitan.
Doubtless, the Right Hon. Gentleman had come
long since to be scarcely less sick of the entire
transaction than the mass of the general com-
munity. Howbeit, we may all of us now look
forward to the time when these melancholy proceed-
ings may be simply referred to incidentally by way
of illustration—in lieu of being dragged forward,
again and again, in all their repulsive details to
disgust even the most infatuated upholder of the
existing system with especial regard to the man-
agement as hitherto of the machinery of popular
representation. Unfortunately, there are exam-
ples "enough and to spare" of the rottenness of
that complex and enormous machinery—registered,
one might say, for the manufacture of model Mem-
bers of Parliament—to preclude us from the
necessity of harping perpetually upon this abomi-
nable case at Derby, or of ventilating exclusively
any one man's reputation Remembering rather
painfully all that has, in this matter, been spoken,
written, and printed about W. 8., about
FRAIL, about FLEWKER, about MORGAN, about
" safe men," and barbers, and bricklayers—we
must confess that we are heartily rejoiced to ob-
serve the completion of this prolonged and scruti-
nising investigation. •
After all that ill-blood engendered by the
wrangling over this deplorable Derby Election,
it is gratifying to perceive, at least,
one tardy indication of good feeling dis-
played towards one of the most honourable
and distinguished Members of the constitu-
ency. Allusion is here made to the tribute of
respect now being proferred to the Mayor of Derby,
Mr. Moss, in his professional capacity as a lawyer,
and in his political capacity as a Liberal, and
especially in consideration of his frank and manly
character, his eminent abilities, his unflinching
resolution, and his unbending consistency. As a
token of the respect inspired by these eminent
qualities, it is proposed that the Mayor of Derby
shall become very shortly the recipient of a public
testimonial. The suggestion of this very graceful
proceeding appears to have emanated from one of
the friends and pupils of Mr. Moss, and one who,
having resided under that gentleman's roof-tree
during four years and upwards, and having thus
been afforded anadmirable opportunity for "judg-
ing fairly of his hidden motives," now comes for-
ward bravely "at a pinch," describing him to be