MEDON. Something like our own Royal Academy. ALDA. No; because with much which was quite as bad, quite as insipid, as coarse in taste, as stupidly presumptuous in attempt, and ridiculous in failure, as ever shocked me on the walls of Somerset House, there was nothing to be compared to the best pictures I have seen there. As I looked and listened to the remarks of the crowd around me, I perceived that the taste for art is even as low in the Netherlands as it is here and elsewhere. MEDON. And, surely, not from the want of models, nor from the want of facility in the means of studying them. You visited, of course, Schamp's collection? ALDA. Surely; there were miracles of art crowded together like goods in a counting-house, with wondrous economy of space, and more lamentable economy of light. Some were nailed against doors, inside aud out, or suspended from screens and window-shutters. Here I saw Rubens' picture of Father Rutseli, the confessor of Albert and Isabella; one of those heads more suited to the crown than to the cowl-grand, sagacious, intellectual, with such a world of meaning in the eye, that one almost shrunk away from the expression. Here, too, I found that remackable picture of Charles the First, painted by Lely during the king's imprisonment at Windsor-the only one for which he sat between his dethronement and his death: he is still melancholy and gentlemanlike, but not quite so dignified as on the canvass of Vandyke. This is the very picture that Horace Walpole mentions as lost or abstracted from the collection at Windsor. How it came into Schamp's collection, I could not learn. A very small head of an Italian girl by Correggio, or in his manner hung close beside a Dutch girl by Mieris: equally exquisite as paintings' they gave me an opportu nity of contrasting two styles, both founded in nature-but the nature, how different! the one all life, the other life and soul. Schamp's collection is liberally open to the public, as well as many others; if artists fail, it is not for want of models. MEDON. Perhaps for want of patronage ? Yet I hear that the late king of the Netherlands sent several young artists to Italy at his own expense, and that the Prince of Orange was liberal and even munificent in his purchases-particularly of the old masters. ALDA. When I went to see the collection of the Prince of Orange at Brussels, I stepped from the room in which hung the glorious Vandykes, perhaps unequalled in the world, into the adjoining apartment, in which were two unfinished portraits disposed upon easels. They represented members of the prince's family; and were painted by a native artist of fashionable fame, and royally patronised. These were pointed out to my admi ration as universally approved. What shall I say of them? Believe me, that they were contemptible beyond all terms of contempt? Can you tell me why the Prince of Orange should have sufficient taste to select and appropriate the finest specimens of art, and yet purchase and patronise the vilest daubs ever perpetrated by imbecility and presumption? MEDON. I know not, unless it be that in the former case he made use of other's eyes and judgment, and in the latter, of his own. ALDA. by I might have anticipated the answer; but be that as it may, of all the galleries I saw in the Netherlands, the small but invaluable collection he had formed in his palace pleased me most. I remember a portrait of Sir Thomas More, Holbein. A female head, by Leonardo da Vinci, said to be one ot the mistresses of Francis I., but this is doubtful; that most magnificen groop, Christ delivering the keys to St. Peter, by Rubens, once in England; about eight or ten Vandykes, masterpieces for instance, Philip IV. and his minister Olivarez; and a Chevalier le Roy and his wife, all that you can imagine of chivalrous dignity, and lady-like grace. But there was one picture, a family group, by Gonsalez, which struck me more than all the rest put together. I had never seen any production of this painter, whose works are scarcely known out of Spain; and looked upon this with equal astonishment and admiration. There was also a small, but most cu W rious collection of pictures, of the ancient Flemis that 1 intently copying a stiff, hard, sour-looking old Madonna, while Ignorance looks on, gaping with admiration. No one knows better than Retzsch the value of these ancient masters-no one has a more genuine feeling for all that is admirable in them; but no one feels more sensibly the gross perversion and exaggeration of the worship paid to them. I wish he would publish this goodhumoured little bit of satire, which is too just and too graceful to be called a caricature. I must tell you, however, that there were two most curious old pictures in the Orange Gallery, which arrested my attention, and of which I have retained a very distinct and vivid recollection; and that is more than I can say of many better pictures. They tell, in a striking manner, a very interesting story: the circumstances are said to have occurred about the year 985, but I cannot say that they rest on any very credible authority. Of these two pictures, each exhibits two scenes. A certain nobleman, a favourite of the Emperor Otho, is condemned to death by his master on the false testimony of the Empress, (a sort of Potiphar's wife,) who has accused him of having tempted her to break her marriage vow. In the back-ground we see the unfortunate man led to judgment; he is in his shirt, bare-footed and bareheaded. His wife walks at his side, to whom he appears to be speaking earnestly, and endeavouring to persuade her of his innocence. A friar precedes them, and a crowd of people follow after. On the walls of the city stand the Emperor and his wicked Empress, looking down on the melancholy procession. In the foreground, have the dead body of the victim, stretched upon we |