e a National Portrait Gallery, and although the
richest and most civilised nation in the world now generally grants
L1,000 a year to supply itself with representative portraits of its
great men and women, being I may say about the price of one portrait by
a successful painter, the portraits of our great lights do not swell the
number of the collection.

"It has been difficult, no doubt, even with this immense amount of cash,
to get portraits of those of the past. They have been locked up in the
stately homes of England.

"Of late years Charles Surface, Earl of Spendthrift, knocks his
ancestors down to the highest chance bidder, but the National Portrait
Gallery knows them not.

"The reason of this is not far to seek.

"Taking up at random an annual report of the trustees, I read: 'The
salaries of officials amount to L1,176, other expenses L591, the police
L635, total L2,402.' And now we come to the interesting item: 'The money
spent on the purchase of portraits L255'! But the particular section of
the report dealing with this item says seven works have been purchased
for L143 18_s._--that is, L20 11_s._ 1_d._ each.

"Small wonder then that many works in the National Portrait Gallery of
England--England where portraiture flourishes--are unworthy of the
attendance of even L35 worth of policemen. Can we wonder when L635 is
paid to the police to gaze at L143 18_s._ worth of portraits, the
purchase of the year?" and so on.

The result of this "ridiculing the State," as the _Times_, in its
leader, expressed it, for the penurious pittance it doles out of the
revenues of the richest country in the world towards the maintenance of
a National Portrait Gallery, was that I was the cause of arousing the
Press of Great Britain to the miserable condition of the National
Portrait Gallery, which ended in our having one in its place more worthy
of the country.

Besides drawing public attention to the National Portrait Gallery, in
the same lecture I put in a word for the struggling unknown portrait
painters. Speaking of payment reminded me of the story told of
Bularchus, a successful painter 716 B.C. Candaules, King of Lydia, paid
him with as much gold as would cover the surface of the work. I told my
audience that I doubted whether, if that system existed now, the
portrait painters would leave any room at all on the Academy walls for
subject pictures.

Would Meissonier or Alma Tadema, say, paint your portrait for three
napoleo