ply the then existing tapestry manufactory at Mortlake with
superior designs for imitation. Five of them were _certainly_ woven
there, and it is far from improbable that the remaining ones were
also.[119]

There was also a project for weaving them by a person of the name of
James Christopher Le Blon, and houses were built and looms erected at
Chelsea expressly for that purpose, but the design failed.

The "British Critic," for January, this year, has the following
spirited remarks with regard to the present situation of the cartoons.
"The cartoons of Raffaelle are very unfairly seen in their present
locale; a long gallery built for the purpose by William the Third, but
in which the light enters through common chamber windows, and therefore
is so much below the cartoons as to leave the greater part of them in
shade. We venture to say there is no country in Europe in which such
works as these--unique, and in their class invaluable--would be treated
with so little honour. It has been decided by competent opinions, that
their removal to London would be attended with great risk to their
preservation, from the soot, damp, accumulation of dust, and other
inconveniences, natural or incident to a crowded city. This, however,
is no fair reason for their being shut up in their present ill-assorted
apartment. There is not a petty state in Germany that would not erect a
gallery on purpose for them; and a few thousand pounds would be well
bestowed in providing a fitting receptacle for some of the finest
productions of human genius in art; and of the full value of which we
_alone_, their possessors, seem to be comparatively insensible. Various
portions of cartoons by Raffaelle, part of the same series or set,
exist in England; and it is far from unlikely that, were there a proper
place to preserve and exhibit the whole in, these would in time, by
presentation or purchase, become the property of the country, and we
should then possess a monument of the greatest master of his art, only
inferior to that which he has left on the walls of the Vatican."

Of all these varied and beautiful paintings, that of the Adoration of
the Magi, from the variety of character and expression, the splendor
and oriental pomp of the whole, the multitude of persons, between
forty and fifty, the various accessaries, elephants, horses, &c., with
the variety of splendid and ornamental illustrations, and the
exquisite grouping, is considered as the most attract