Sir Edwin Landseer left an estate of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, and the works unsold at his death brought about seventy thousand pounds. His will made but a few bequests, and the remainder of this large sum was divided between his brother and three sisters. With the account of Sir Edwin I shall close the account of painters given in this volume. We have seen how few actual remains of the painting of ancient nations are now in existence. Almost nothing is left even from the times of the Greeks; in truth, there is more upon the tombs of Egypt than in the land of Hellas. We read accounts of classic painting which arouse our deepest interest one moment, only to remember in the next that we can see but the merest scraps of all this wealth of beauty which moved the cultured Greeks to write of it with such enthusiasm. After the days of classic art we have endeavored to trace painting through a period when it could scarcely be termed an art, so little of it was done, and that little was so far below our ideal. Again, this decline was followed by a Renaissance--an awakening--and from that day in the fourteenth century when the Madonna of Cimabue was carried in triumph through the streets of Florence, this art moved on with progressive steps until Michael Angelo, Leonardo, Raphael, Titian, and others highly gifted, had set up the standards which have remained as beacons and guides to all the world. In tracing this progress we have seen that Italy, the German nations, Spain, France, and England have all striven to dream dreams of beauty and grandeur, of tenderness and love, and to fix them in fitting colors where all the world could see them. The past is always fascinating. No stories are so pleasantly begun as those that say, "A long time ago there lived," etc. One can have the most complete satisfaction in the study of what has happened so far in the past that we can see all its effects and judge of it by the tests which time is sure to bring to everything. It is such a study that has been made in these pages, and I would suggest that it has a second use scarcely less important than the study of history--that is, the preparation it affords for judging of what is done in the present. A knowledge of what has been achieved enables us by comparison to decide upon the merits of new works. The painting of to-day offers an immense field for investigation. When we remember that five centuries ago the painters of the world could be counted by tens, and are told that now there is an average of twenty-five hundred painters in some foreign cities, we see that a lifetime is scarcely sufficient in which to study the painting of our own era.