MR. ANGERSTEIN'S COLLECTION. OH! 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 plentitude 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 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 chef-d'œuvres 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 pas'sions. 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 even its pleasures, appear like 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? |