h
the lonesome mansion to its _sanctum sanctorum_. At length, perhaps,
the old man takes his last look at his pictures, and then shuts his
eyes for ever. It may be, that within six weeks the laboriously
collected paintings are in a Pall-Mall auction-room, with all the
world bidding and buzzing round the pulpit; or it may also chance that
a paragraph goes the round of the papers, intimating that his
celebrated and unrivalled collection of modern works of art has been
bequeathed by the late Mr So-and-so to the nation--always on the
condition, that it provides some fitting place for their preservation.
The government receives bequests of this kind oftener than it complies
with the stipulation.

In the beginning of March, the first of the galleries opens its
portals to the world. This is the British Institution, established at
the west end of Pall-Mall, and now in existence for the better part of
a half century. The idea of the establishment was to form a sort of
nursing institution for the Royal Academy. Here artists of standing
and reputation were to exhibit their sketches and less important
works; and here more juvenile aspirants were to try their wings before
being subjected to the more severe ordeal of Trafalgar Square. The
idea was good, and flourished apace; so much so, that you not
unfrequently find in the British Institution no small proportion of
works of a calibre hardly below the average of the Great Exhibition;
while the A. R. A.'s, and even the aristocratic R. A.'s[1] themselves,
do not by any means disdain to grace the humble walls of the three
rooms in Pall-Mall. This year, the only picture of Sir Edwin
Landseer's exhibited--a wild Highland corry, with a startled herd of
red deer--is to be found in the British Institution. But the merit of
the works is wonderfully unequal. They are of all classes and all
sizes, in water-colour and in oils. Clever sketches by clever
unknowns, rest beside sprawling frescos by youths whose ambition is
vaster than their genius; and finished and accomplished works of art
are set off by the foils of unnumbered pieces of unformed and not very
promising mediocrity. Among them are the productions of many of the
more humble painters of _genre_ subjects--the class who delight in
portraying homely cottage interiors, or troops of playing children, or
bits of minutely-finished still life--or careful academical studies of
groups with all the conventions duly observed: this class of pictur