rsuading, or hoping to persuade, a
nation that if it had pictures at all, it should have those pictures on
the line of the eye; that it was not well to have a noble picture many
feet above the eye, merely for the glory of the room. Then I think that
as soon as you decide that a picture is to be seen, it is easy to find
out the way of showing it; to say that it should have such and such a
room, with such and such a light; not a raking light, as I heard Sir
Charles Eastlake express it the other day, but rather an oblique and
soft light, and not so near the picture as to catch the eye painfully.
That may be easily obtained, and I think that all other questions after
that are subordinate.

_Dean of St. Paul's._ Your proposition would require a great extent of
wall?--An immense extent of wall.

121. _Chairman._ I see you state in the pamphlet to which I have before
alluded, that it is of the highest importance that the works of each
master should be kept together. Would not such an arrangement increase
very much the size of the National Gallery?--I think not, because I have
only supposed in my plan that, at the utmost, two lines of pictures
should be admitted on the walls of the room; that being so, you would be
always able to put all the works of any master together without any
inconvenience or difficulty in fitting them to the size of the room.
Supposing that you put the large pictures high on the walls, then it
might be a question, of course, whether such and such a room or
compartment of the Gallery would hold the works of a particular master;
but supposing the pictures were all on a continuous line, you would only
stop with A and begin with B.

Then you would only have them on one level and one line?--In general;
that seems to me the common-sense principle.

_Mr. Richmond._ Then you disapprove of the whole of the European hanging
of pictures in galleries?--I think it very beautiful sometimes, but not
to be imitated. It produces most noble rooms. No one can but be
impressed with the first room at the Louvre, where you have the most
noble Venetian pictures one mass of fire on the four walls; but then
none of the details of those pictures can be seen.

_Dean of St. Paul's._ There you have a very fine general effect, but you
lose the effect of the beauties of each individual picture?--You lose
all the beauties, all the higher merits; you get merely your general
idea. It is a perfectly splendid room, of which a great pa