ledge and character in Wouverman's horses—an ear, an eye turned round, a cropped tail, give you their history and thoughts-but from the want of a little arrangement, his figures look too often like spots on a dark ground. When they are properly relieved and disentangled from the rest of the composition, there is an appearance of great life and bustle in his pictures. His horses, however, have too much of the manège in them

he seldom gets beyond the camp or the riding school. This room is rich in master-pieces. Here is the Jacob's Dream, by Rembrandt, with that sleeping figure, thrown like a bundle of clothes in one corner of the picture, by the side of some stunted bushes, and with those winged shapes, not human, nor angelical, but bird-like, dream-like, treading on clouds, ascending, descending through the realms of endless light, that loses itself in infinite space! No one else could ever grapple with this subject, or stamp it on the willing canvass in its gorgeous obscurity but Rembrandt! Here also is the St. Barbara, of Rubens, fleeing from her persecutors; a noble design, as if she were scaling the steps of some high overhanging turret, moving majestically on, with Fear before her, Death behind her, and Martyrdom crowning her:—and

here is an eloquent landscape by the same master-hand, the subject of which is, a shepherd piping his flock homewards through a narrow defile, with a graceful group of autumnal trees waving on the edge of the declivity above, and the rosy evening light streaming through the clouds on the green moist landscape in the still lengthening distance. Here (to pass from one kind of excellence to another with kindly interchange) is a clear sparkling Waterfall, by Ruysdael, and Hobbima's Water-Mill, with the wheels in motion, and the ducks paddling in the restless stream. Is not this a sad anti-climax from Jacob's Dream to a picture of a WaterMill? We do not know; and we should care as little, could we but paint either of the pictures.

Entire affection scorneth nicer hands.

If a picture is admirable in its kind, we do not give ourselves much trouble about the subject. Could we paint as well as Hobbima, we should not envy Rembrandt: nay, even as it is, while we can relish both, we envy neither!

The CENTRE ROOM commences with a Girl at a Window, by Rembrandt. The picture is known by the print of it, and is one of the most remarkable and pleasing in the Collection. For

clearness, for breadth, for a lively, ruddy look of healthy nature, it cannot be surpassed. The execution of the drapery is masterly. There is a story told of its being his servant-maid looking out of a window, but it is evidently the portrait of a mere child.—A Farrier shoeing an Ass, by Berchem, is in his usual manner. There is truth of character and delicate finishing; but the fault of all Berchem's pictures is, that he continues to finish after he has done looking at nature, and his last touches are different from hers. Hence comes that resemblance to tea-board painting, which even his best works are chargeable with. We find here one or two small Claudes of no great value; and two very clever specimens of the court-painter, Watteau, the Gainsborough of France. They are marked as Nos. 184 and 194, Fête Champêtre, and Le Bal Champêtre. There is something exceedingly light, agreeable, and characteristic in this artist's productions. He might almost be said to breathe his figures and his flowers on the canvas-so fragile is their texture, so evanescent is his touch. He unites the court and the country at a sort of salient point-you may fancy yourself with Count Grammont and the beauties of Charles II. in their gay retreat at Tunbridge.

Wells. His trees have a drawing-room air with them, an appearance of gentility and etiquette, and nod gracefully over-head; while the figures. below, thin as air, and vegetably clad, in the midst of all their affectation and grimace, seem to have just sprung out of the ground, or to be the fairy inhabitants of the scene in masquerade. They are the Oreads and Dryads of the Luxembourg! Quaint association, happily effected by the pencil of Watteau! In the Bal Champêtre we see Louis XIV. himself dancing, looking so like an old beau, his face flushed aud puckered up with gay anxiety; but then the satin of his slashed doublet is made of the softest leaves of the water-lily; Zephyr plays wanton with the curls of his wig! We have nobody who could produce a companion to this picture now: nor do we very devoutly wish it. The Louis the Fourteenths are extinct, and we suspect their revival would hardly be compensated even by the re-appearance of a Watteau.-No. 187, the Death of Cardinal Beaufort, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, is a very indifferent and rather unpleasant sketch of a very fine picture. One of the most delightful things in this delightful collection is the Portrait (195) of the Prince of the Austurias, by Velasquez. The easy lightness

of the childish Prince contrasts delightfully with the unwieldly figure of the horse, which has evidently been brought all the way from the Low Countries for the amusement of his rider. Velasquez was (with only two exceptions, Titian and Vandyke) as fine a portrait-painter as ever lived! In the centre room also is the Meeting of Jacob and Rachel, by Murillo a sweet picture with a fresh green landscape, and the heart of Love in the midst of it.-There are several heads by Holbein scattered up and down the different compartments. We need hardly observe that they all have character in the extreme, so that we may be said to be acquainted with the people they represent; but then they give nothing but character, and only one part of that, viz. the dry, the literal, the concrete, and fixed. They want the addition of passion and beauty; but they are the finest caput mortuums of expression that ever were made. Hans Holbein had none of the volatile essence of genius in his composition. If portrait-painting is the prose of the art, his pictures are the prose of portrait-painting. Yet he is "a reverend name" in art, and one of the benefactors of the human mind. He has left faces behind him that we would give the world to have seen, and there they are