and intended as a joy forever. Architecture and objects not
transportable could be represented by casts or photographs. Models,
drawings, and engravings also come within its scope; and there should
be attached to the parent gallery a library of reference and a
lecture- and reading-room.

Connected with it there might be schools of design for improvement in
ornamental manufacture, the development of architecture, and whatever
aids to refine and give beauty to social life, including a simple
academic system for the elementary branches of drawing and coloring,
upon a scientific basis of accumulated knowledge and experience,
providing models and other advantages not readily accessible to
private resources, but leaving individual genius free to follow its
own promptings upon a well-laid technical foundation. As soon as the
young artist has acquired the grammar of his profession, he should be
sent forth to study directly from Nature and to mature his invention
unfettered by authoritative academic system, which more frequently
fosters conventionalism and imposes trammels upon talent than endows
it with strength and freedom.

Such is a brief sketch of institutions feasible amongst us from
humble beginnings by individual enterprise. Once founded and their
value demonstrated, the countenance of the state may be hopefully
invoked. Their very existence would become an incentive to munificent
gifts. Individuals owning fine works of art would grow ambitious to
have their memories associated with patriotic enterprise. Art invokes
liberality and evokes fraternity. The sentiment, that there is a
common property in the productions of genius, making possession a
trust for the public welfare, will increase among those by whose
taste and wealth they have been accumulated. Masterpieces will cease
to be regarded as the selfish acquisitions of covetous amateurs, but,
like spoken truth, will become the inalienable birthright of the
people,--finding their way freely and generously, through the
magnetic influences of public spirit and pertinent examples, to those
depositories where they can most efficaciously perform their mission
of truth and beauty to the world. Then the people themselves will
begin to take pride in their artistic wealth, to honor artists as
they now do soldiers and statesmen, and to value the more highly
those virtues which are interwoven with all noble effort.

In 1823, when the National Gallery of England was founded, the