The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-05-23 00:00:00

the exhibitions, I have often been struck by the singu.

• larities by which individuals seek to distinguish them-
selves from the common herd. At one period the rage is
in the direction of a fold-over shirt collar and an exposed
throat ; to this succeeds a desire for immortalising hu-
manity in all the stiffness of starched cravats, and collars
as stark as a knife-board, with edges only less keen than a
razor. Here we have a gentleman, who, seemingly sensi-
ble that learning is advantageous, and doubtful of his
ability to show his claim to that distinction, clothes that
head in an academical cap, on, or in which, we may look
in vain for any other symbol of erudition ; via a vis to the
pseudo scholar, we have, occasionally, a gentleman of tiny
enough proportions, wearing a hirsute thatch of such out-
rageous magnitude and bristling uproar, as seems to favour
the conjecture, that, knowing there is nothing in his head,
he has resolved to show how much external furnishing it
can be loaded with. In spite of such puerilities and bad
taste on the part of sitters ; and of unworthy sycophancy
on the part of inferior artists, we have still numerous and
noble specimens of portraiture ; and we may rest assured
that that branch of art which was not considered un-
worthy of the pencil and the genius of Turkic—which
conferred the highest claims of REMBRANDT upon pos-
terity—to which VANDYKE owes his fame, and REYNOLDS
his reputation, has, in itself, something more to ensure it
public patronage, than its power of ministering to mere
personal vanity. In addition to the consideration it de-
serves as a means of indicating and gratifying family
affection, it possesses also high claims as a branch of philo-
sophical and scientific art, and in no country of the world
does it meet with a more sedulous or intelligent cultiva-
tion than in the English school of pictorial art. Its dig-
nity and importance are fitly and substantially vindicated
and maintained by not a few of the artists whose works
grace the collection in Trafalgar-square ; nor are champions
of its merits wanting in several of the other exhibitions,
which at present solicit the support and woo the coun-
tenance of an educated public. In the other walks of art
the collection is also strong, and although it lacks many
of • the melo-dramatic features which form so striking a
characteristic of the French school, and is deficient in that
ethical mysticism which so predominates among the Ger-
mans, an exhibition which contains chefs d'oeuvres from
the hand of IVlscrasE, of WARD, EASTLAKE, LESLIE, and
FAED ; which is enriched by the labours of LANDSEER, of
ANsDELL, and of LANCE, some of whom the British nation
may be justly proud of, possess a high claim upon the
public 'regard.
Many of your readers, in common with all lovers of art,
will learn with much satisfaction, that the government has
"decided on appointing a salaried director of the National
Gallery," a fact, announced in the House of Commons on
Thursday evening. Another artistic fact of some import-
ance has also been bruited, not in the House of Commons,
but in well-informed literary and artistic circles ; it is,
that if peace is maintained in central Europe, a Great
FabibitiQU of (*ow Art is to eke plue in bluilicla,