ells us
of the individuals, its verdict eked out and assisted by instructive
minutiae of lineament and meaning detected, in the "off-guard" of
private intercourse, by the eye of a great painter and a lifelong
student of physiognomy. We glance from the rugged Blucher to the
wily Metternich, and from the philosophic Humboldt to the semi-savage
Platoff. The dandies George IV. and Alexander are here, but Brummel
is left out. The gem of the collection is Pius VII., Lawrence's
masterpiece, widely familiar by engravings. Raphael's Julius II. seems
to have been in the artist's mind, but that work is not improved on,
unless in so far as the critical eye of our day may delight in the
more intricate tricks of chiaroscuro and effect to which Lawrence has
recourse. "Brunswick's fated chieftain" will interest the votaries of
Childe Harold. Could he have looked forward to 1870, he would perhaps
have chosen a different side at Waterloo, as his father might at Jena,
and elected to figure in oils at Versailles rather than at Windsor.
Incomparably more destructive to the small German princes have been
the Hohenzollerns than the Bonapartes.

[Illustration: THE THAMES EMBANKMENT.]

We forget these nineteenth-century people in the council-chamber,
wherein reign Guido, Rembrandt, Claude, and even Da Vinci. If
Leonardo really executed all the canvases ascribed to him in English
collections, the common impressions of his habits of painting but
little, and not often finishing that, do him great injustice. Martin
Luther is here, by Holbein, and the countess of Desmond, the merry old
lady

Who lived to the age of twice threescore and ten,
And died of a fall from a cherry tree then,

is embalmed in the bloom of one hundred and twenty and the gloom of
Rembrandt. The two dozen pictures in this room form nearly as odd an
association as any like number of portraits could do. Guercino's Sibyl
figures with a cottage interior by Teniers, and Lely's Prince Rupert
looks down with lordly scorn on Jonah pitched into the sea by the
combined efforts of the two Poussins. The link between Berghem's cows
and Del Sarto's Holy Family was doubtless supplied to the minds of
the hanging committee by recollections of the manger. Our thrifty
Pennsylvanian, West, is assigned the vestibule. Five of his "ten-acre"
pictures illustrate the wars of Edward III. and the Black Prince.
The king's closet and the queen's closet are filled mostly by the
Flemings. Vandyck's