in
our National Gallery. We hope it is a mistake, and that there has been
no such practice. The effect must be to make them dull and horny, and
to destroy all brilliancy in time. We say no more upon that subject,
believing that our National Gallery is intrusted to good hands, and
that whatever is done, will be done with judgment, and not without
much reflection. A new varnish has appeared, "Bentley's." We believe
it is copal, but rendered removable as mastic. It is certainly very
brilliant, not, or but slightly, subject to chill, and is more
permanent, as well as almost colourless. De Burtin not only denounces
the use of oil in varnishes, but speaks of a more disgusting practice,
common in Italy, of rubbing pictures "with fat, oil, or lard, or other
animal grease.... So destructive a practice comes in process of time
to rot the picture, so that it will not hold together." We should
scarcely have thought it worth while to notice this, had we not seen
pictures so treated in this country. Behold a specimen of folly and
hazardous experiment:--"At that time, I frequented the Dresden gallery
every morning, and got from M. Riedal all the details of his practice.
He informed me that, amongst others, the chief works of Correggio,
Raffaelle, Titian, and Procaccini, after having undergone his
preparatory operations, had got a coat of his 'oil of flowers,' which
he would repeat, until every part became 'perfectly bright.' And on my
remarking, that in the admirable 'Venus' of Titian, the carnations
alone were bright, and all the rest flat, he told me with perfect
coolness, that 'having only as yet given it three coats of his oil,
that it was not astonishing, but that he would put it all in unison by
multiplying the coats.'" The man should have been suffocated in his
"oil of flowers," preserved in them, and hung up in the gallery _in
terrorem_. Could ghosts walk and punish, we would not have been in his
skin, though perfumed with his preservative oil of flowers, under the
visitations of the ghosts of Correggio, Raffaelle, Titian, and
Procaccini. "Such," adds M. de Burtin, "was his threat at the very
moment that I felt overpowered with chagrin, to see the superb
carnations of Titian acquiring a yellowish, sad, and monotonous tone,
through the coats that he had already given to it."

We have noticed, at considerable length, this work, and have been led
on by the interest of the subject. The perusal of this translation
will repay the c