of preserved articles from China, will give some insight into the nature of a Chinese dinner; and there are curious collections from Siam and Japan, including rhinoceros' hide, and elephant's trunk. In the department of useful art, many articles of great value have been lent for exhibition with the best results. Here are shewn specimens of China and pottery ware, glass, jewellery, fancy work in metals, mosaics, carvings in wood and ivory, etc. etc., both antique and modern. Many of these things are mere curiosities, or illustrating the progress of the arts, but there are many which are highly instructive as examples for imitation. Lectures are delivered in the theatre on the art collections. Amongst the sculptures will be seen Cibber's statues of Melancholy and Madness, removed from Bethlehem Hospital.

With the exception of the Turner pictures, which are now in the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, all the paintings of the English school belonging to the nation are exhibited at the South Kensington Museum, in galleries well lighted from above.

The collection of British pictures was commenced by Mr. Sheepshanks, who, on giving 234 oil paintings to the nation, stipulated that they should be kept either in the immediate neighbourhood of Kensington, in a suitable building, or failing this, at Cambridge. This gift has been valued at £52,595. It was followed by a gift of water-colours by Mrs. Ellison, valued at £3000. The remaining part of the collection belongs to the trustees of the National Gallery, and comprises the British pictures purchased with the Angerstein collection, and the munificent gift and bequest of Mr. Robert Vernon and Mr. Jacob Bell. The Vernon collection contained 162 pictures, 6 busts, and a group of figures in marble—a splendid gift indeed. They were given in 1847, the donor dying two years subsequently. Amongst the older paintings, notice Hogarth's Marriage à la mode-a series of six paintings-and the artist's portrait of himself; Wilson's Mæcenas' villa, and a landscape with the story of Niobe; Gainsborough's Market-Cart, and the Watering Place; Constable's Corn-Field; Lawrence's John Philip Kemble as Hamlet; portrait of West the painter; portrait of Mr. Angerstein; Copley's death of Lord Chatham; Wilkie's Blind Fiddler, and Village Festival; Reynold's Graces sacrificing to Hymen (the daughter of Sir William Montgomery) the Banished Lord, the Infant Samuel, studies of angels-five heads "painted with astonishing lightness, delicacy, and feeling," portrait of Lord Heathfield.

In the Vernon and Sheepshanks collections will be found many excellent specimens of the artists of the modern British school, including pictures from the easels of Wilkie, C. R. Leslie, Edwin Landseer, Mulready, Webster, Maclise, E. M. Ward, D. Roberts, Creswick, Stanfield, E. W. Cooke, and other painters. Notice amongst the Vernon pictures, Sir Joshua Reynolds' Age of Innocence, which cost £1522:10s.; a landscape by Gainsborough; Wilkie's bagpiper; and Leslie's Sancho and the Duchess.

THE SOANE MUSEUM, on the north side of Lincoln's Inn Fields (No. 13), is distinguished from the neighbouring houses by some architectural embellishment. This was the residence of Sir John Soane, the founder of the museum, who, born the son of a bricklayer, died a knight in 1837, at the age of 84, after having amassed a large fortune as an architect. He vested £30,000 stock in trustees, to apply the dividends in support of the museum, and obtained an Act of Parliament for settling it for the benefit of the public.

In ordinary years, the museum is open free between the hours of 10 and 4, on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, during the months of April, May, and June. Also to foreigners, and others having special reasons for soliciting admission, on Tuesdays in February, March, July, and August. Those who wish to obtain admission should apply by letter to the curator, or personally at the museum, a day or two before the day of the visit. The name and address of the person requiring admission, with the number of the proposed party, must be stated, and the caller's card is expected to be left. If there be no reason against complying, the curator will forward by post a card of admission for the next open day. To obtain access to the books, drawings, MSS., or permission to copy pictures or other works of art, special application must be made to the trustees or the curator. It is highly probable, however, that hereafter the museum will be more freely open to the public than it has hitherto been.

"There is no institution in London (says Mrs. Jameson) in which a few hours may be more pleasantly whiled away, or even more profitably employed, than in this fairy collection of virtû, where the infinite variety of the objects assembled together in every department of art-many, indeed, sufficiently trivial, some also of peculiar beauty and value-suggest to the intelligent mind

and cultivated taste a thousand thoughts, remembrances, and associations, while the ingenuity shewn in the arrangement amuses the fancy in a very agreeable manner."

The objects are distributed over 24 rooms, every corner being crammed, every inch of wall turned to account. In the entrance hall is a bust of Sir Thomas Lawrence, and in the first room is a portrait by that artist of Sir John Soane, as well as a picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds, the Snake in the Grass, which cost 510 guineas. Passing Banks' model of a sleeping child, we reach a room, the capabilities of which for exhibiting pictures are considerably enlarged by the employment of shutters moving on hinges. In this room are placed Hogarth's four pictures, representing the scenes of an election with his accustomed humour. The successful candidate, whose chairing is depicted on the fourth, was Bubb Doddington, afterwards Lord Melcombe Regis, who, in his self-complacent diary, gave a specimen of the political morality of that day. These pictures were purchased from the painter by Garrick. Soane bought them for 1650 guineas when the effects of the actor's widow were sold. The Rake's Progress is delineated in another series of eight pictures by the same painter. Repeated engravings have made these paintings well known. In the same room is a very fine view on the Grand Canal at Venice by Canaletto, and two smaller works by the same artist; also a large work by Calcott, and several other paintings by Fuseli, Danby, and others. In a lower storey are numerous relics of antique sculpture, painted glass, and cinerary urns. The most interesting object, however, is an Egyptian sarcophagus, discovered by Belzoni in 1816 in a royal tomb at Thebes, 9 feet 4 inches long, 3 feet 8 inches wide, and with an average depth of 2 feet. It has been cut out of a single piece of arragonite, so transparent that the rays of a candle penetrate through it even where it is three inches thick. It is sculptured within and without with hundreds of hieroglyphical figures, and bears the name and titles of the father of Rameses the Great. The lid was found in another place broken in many pieces. The fragments now lie underneath the sarcophagus. Soane paid

£2000 for this curious relic after it had been refused by the trustees of the British Museum. In the gallery under the dome is a bust of Sir John Soane, by Chantrey, and a good cast of the Apollo Belvidere. Ascending the stairs to the first floor we pass Flaxman's model of the Archangel Michael

overcoming Satan, a noble composition, and then a Mercury in bronze by Giovanni de Bologna. In the south drawing room are a series of medals, 140 in number, struck in France during the consulate and reign of Napoleon. They were once in the possession of Josephine, having been selected for her by the Baron Denon. Here are an ivory table and four ivory chairs brought from Tippoo Sahib's palace at Seringapatam; Sir Christopher Wren's watch; a piece of jewellery found amongst the royal baggage after the battle of Naseby. In the next room are several modern pictures, the best of which is Turner's Van Tromp's Barge entering the Texel. In glazed cases are gems, cameos, and intaglios. At the foot of the next flight of stairs is Flaxman's bust of the younger Pitt; and in a recess is a cast of the shield executed in silver gilt for George IV., at a cost of 2000 guineas, after the designs of Flaxman, who in not less than a hundred figures has endeavoured to display the shield of Achilles, as described in the Iliad. Amongst the objects, which are only shewn by special permission, are the manuscript of the Jerusalem Delivered in Tasso's autograph; a Latin manuscript embellished with exquisite miniatures by Giulio Clovio; and a missal of the fifteenth century, with miniatures by Lucas van Leyden and his scholars.

The NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY is a collection of about 100 portraits and busts of persons famous or infamous in our history and literature, brought together since 1858, and placed temporarily in a house, 29 Great George Street, Westminster, to which the public has free access on Wednesdays and Saturdays, between the hours of twelve and five in summer, and twelve and four in winter. The collection is being gradually increased by gifts and purchases. Here may be seen the Chandos Shakspere, with rings in the ears; Mary Queen of Scots, the Fraser-Tytler portrait; Elizabeth, the unfortunate Queen of Bohemia, daughter of our James I., by Mirevelt; John Locke, at the age of 72; Pope, by Jervas, a painter to whom the poet addressed some lines :

Alas! how little from the grave we claim;
Thou but preserv'st a face, and I a name.

Judge Jeffries, by Kneller; Sir Robert Walpole by Vanloo (a painter whose success Hogarth styled "an inundation of folly and puff"); Hogarth himself, a terra cotta bust by Roubiliac; Han