that to acquire one or two such works,
was better than to gain any number of second
or third-rate pictures, such as might indeed be
endured in private collections, but not in the
National Collection of this great and prosperous
country. He had (giving a larger margin than
his own judgment entirely coincided with)
granted that out of the £78,185 spent since
the year 1844, the following purchases were
justifiable— the Judgment of Paris at £4000,
the Boar-Hunt at £2200, the Vision of a
Knight at £1050, the Tribute-Money at £2604,
(against this the E.-W. protests, but it is
allowed, as is the case with the Adoration
of the Magi and the two RUYSDAELS, because of the
public consent), the Adoration of the Magi at
£1977, the RUYSDAELS at, respectively, £1187
and £1069, the PERUGINO at £3571, the Adoration
of the Shepherds of VELASQUEZ at £2050,
and the Darius of PAUL VERONESE at £13,650.
These pictures were not purchased in lots, and
together made up a sum of £33,358, leaving a
balance of upwards of £40,000, which witness
contended had been misapplied. Two things
more, the witness had endeavoured to prove:
first, that it was not right, when a picture was
purchased for the country, that it should be made
over to an individual; secondly, that it was absurd
to appoint a commission to decide on the proper
position for the Vernon Gallery, and then not to
abide by the conclusion arrived at by that
commission. Witness had now one more inquiry to
make, and he had done. He had been told that the
really fine works by old masters, which were to
be found in various public and private collections
on the Continent, were not to be bought
for money; he wished to know if it were the
opinion of the Jury that if good pictures by the
old masters were not to be had, the only thing
to do was to buy bad or indifferent ones, and he
wished also to know whether it would not be
better to spend the public money on good
modern pictures, both English and foreign, than
on bad ancient ones, purchased merely because
they were ancient?

By Sir George Beaumont—Yes, witness was
of opinion that there actually were some pictures
by the modern artists which were superior
to some pictures by the old. Witness had that
very morning, in walking down St. James's-
street, seen a pair of photographs from two
pictures by a living French painter, which gave
him greater pleasure than nine-tenths of the
works of the old masters. They were pictures
that reached the mind, and not the eye only.
The first represents a scene in the Coliseum at
Rome, in the days when it was used for the vile
purpose for which it was built. A group of
doomed gladiators approach the seat of the
Emperor, which is raised high above them, and
salute him on their road to death. The grace
and magnificence of this group, marvellously
fine as it is; the strange truth of the scene,
which is put before one with inconceivable
reality and force; these qualities are nothing
to the mind that is in the picture. The athletes
are presented by a courtier-like and flippant
master of the revels, and the royal salute rises
to the imperial throne. " The men about to die
salute thee, Great Cæsar." Words that fall like
idle sounds on the ear of him to whom they are
addressed. The fat and blasé wretch is not even
looking at the men as they approach him. These
preliminary forms only bore him; let them come
to bloodshed, that may rouse him, perhaps. This
fat Emperor, seated on his high throne, is
something removed from his court; he is lonely and
cursed in his look, and is more an object of pity
than the men below, who are " butchered to
make a Roman holiday," and how much more
than those already slain, whose bodies lie about
the arena. This is the first picture. It shows
the Sin; the second—representing the Assassination
of Julius Cæsar— shows the Punishment.
An unpromising subject enough it might be
supposed; but what are sterile subjects in the
hands of unthinking and conventional men, are
invested with novelty and interest by the touch
of genius. The artist has in this great work
abandoned himself to a guide that leads men on
to glory with sure and unerring steps; he has
bowed himself before the Throne of Truth, and
bound himself by her eternal laws. What the
senate was in the time of Cæsar, the senate is
now; and a senator in a toga or a paletot is still
a man. That Senate-house, in which the
Emperor is murdered, has its seats encumbered
with papers, as they would be in the Luxembourg.
One man has left a cloak in the place
where he was sitting, and one has fallen asleep
so heavily that the assassination itself has not
awakened him. The body of the emperor lies
decently covered in the front of the picture, and
the throne on which he was seated is wrested
from its place. Meanwhile the conspirators are
departing in a little group, huddled together at
the back of the picture, and some of the hindmost
of these turn, as they depart, to look on
what they have done.

Witness would now put it to the Jury whether
it was not better, till we could get first-rate
pictures by the old masters, to buy such
glorious specimens as these of the new, and
whether any triumph of Julius Cæsar that
MANTEGNA could commemorate was such a
triumph as this of which he had spoken?

Professor Waghorn said in few words that the
Jury had heard what Professor Fudge had put
forward in the course of his evidence. He (the
learned Doctor) was of opinion that the views of
witness were extreme and exaggerated. He had
consulted with his colleague on the bench (the
donor of some of the most beautiful works in
the National Collection), who was of the same
opinion as himself. He (the learned Doctor)
was determined to stand by those time-honoured
names which had come down to them from former
ages adorned with the high laudations which
the voices of each succeeding generation had
accumulated over them. The learned Doctor
had, however, no wish to influence the minds of
the Jury. Their business was to form their own
verdict upon what they had heard— upon the
evidence of Professor Fudge, accompanied by such