ept the donation of a
gallery of some three hundred pictures, collected with taste and
discrimination by a generous lover of art, because it did not wish to
be put to the expense of finding wall-room for them. But this spirit
is departing, and now our slowness or reluctance is rather the result
of a want of knowledge and critical judgment than of a want of
feeling for art.

To stimulate this feeling, it is requisite that our public should
have free access to galleries in which shall be exhibited in
chronological series specimens of the art of all nations and schools,
arranged according to their motives and the special influences that
attended their development. After this manner a mental and artistic
history of the world may be spread out like a chart before the
student, while the artist with equal facility can trace up to their
origin the varied methods, styles, and excellences of each prominent
epoch. A gallery of art is a perpetual feast of the most intense and
refined enjoyment to every one capable of entering into its phases of
thought and execution, analyzing its external and internal being, and
tracing the mysterious transformations of spirit into form. It has
been well said, that a complete gallery, on a broad foundation, in
which all tastes, styles, and methods harmoniously mingle, is a court
of final appeal of one phase of civilization against another, from an
examination of which we can sum up their respective qualities and
merits, drawing therefrom for our own edification as from a perpetual
wellspring of inspiration and knowledge. But if we sit in judgment
upon the great departed, they likewise sit in judgment upon us. And
it is precisely where such means of testing artistic growth best
exist that modern art is at once most humble and most aspiring:
conscious of its own power and in many respects superior technical
advantages, both it and the public are still content to go to the
past for instruction, and each to seek to rise above the transitory
bias of fashion or local passions to a standard of taste that will
abide world-wide comparison and criticism.

An edifice for a gallery or museum of art should be fire-proof,
sufficiently isolated for light and effective ornamentation, and
constructed so as to admit of indefinite extension. Its chief feature
should be the suitable accommodation and exhibition of its contents.
But provision should be made for its becoming eventually in
architectural effect consis