n public will sustain perfect this humble beginning of a
Public Gallery of Art, or abandon the formation of one to future
chances, when the difficulties will be much greater and the
opportunities for success much fewer. It must be considered, that, at
this moment, while genuine works of Art are growing more and more
difficult to be procured, the rivalry of public and private collectors
is rapidly increasing. It is true that the existing great galleries
come into the market only for pictures specially wanted to fill some
important gap in their series, for which they pay prices that would
startle our public economists. America will have to undergo the
competition, even if she now enters this field, of several important
foreign galleries in the process of formation, among which are those
of Manchester, with a subscribed capital, _as a beginning_, of
L100,000; of the Association of St. Petersburg, for the same purpose,
under the patronage of the Imperial Family; and of one even in
Australia."

Mr. Jarves's collection is not confined by any means to what may be
called the _curiosities_ of Art. It contains one hundred and
twenty-five pictures; and, rich as it is in works that mark the
successive stages of development in Italian painting, it possesses
also specimens of its later and most perfect productions. Examples of
the pure Byzantine bring us to those of the Greco-Italian school, and
these to the early Italian, represented (in its Umbrian branch) by
Cimabue, by Giotto and his followers, the Gaddi, Cavallini, Giottino,
Orgagna, and others; while of the Sienese we have Duccio, Simone di
Martino, and Lorenzetti, with more of less note. Of the Ascetics we
have, among others, Fra Angelico, Castagno, and Giovanni di Paolo. The
Realists are ushered in by Masolino, Masaccio, Filippo Lippi, and go
on in an unbroken series through Botticelli, Filippino Lippi, and
Cosimo Roselli, to Domenico Ghirlandajo, Leonardo, Raffaello, and a
design of Michel Angelo, painted by one of his pupils. Nor does the
succession end here; Andrea del Sarto, R. Ghirlandajo, Vasari,
Bronzino, Pontormo, and others, follow. Of the Religionists, there are
Lorenzo di Credi, Fra Bartolommeo, Perugino, and their scholars. The
progress of landscape, history, and anatomical drawing may be traced
in Paolo Uccello, Dello Delli, Piero di Cosimo, Pinturicchio, the
Pollajuoli, and Luca Signorelli. Here also is Gentile da Fabriano.
Venice gives us G. Bellini, M. Basait