to explain himself thus by duplicate) “that every master should be represented by one or more of his best works, yet as such works are not essential to the completeness of the collection, considered as an historical series, but serve rather to enrich it as a mere assemblage of beautiful works,” &c. &c. Can anything show more his contempt of mere beautiful works, as in no way being an object in collecting? In fact, the whole pamphlet is to recommend, if not to enforce, the gathering together an enormous mass of curiosity lumber, and building a labyrinth of “Chambers of Horrors” to hold them. And it must be taken into account that this absurd, this tasteless scheme, is not confined to pictures. It is proposed, in most views of our future gallery, that statues are to be added, and architecture is to claim its due share as one of the Fine Arts; and where are we to begin, and where end? Is statuary to find its rude commencement in the “Cannibal Islands,” its progress in Tartary, its rise and deification in joss-houses, Burmah furnishing “specimens,” even the wheels of Juggernaut moving slowly and majestically to a new enthronement in Kensington Gardens, or wherever our grand, national, amalgamated museum is to be? Pagodas will yield up their deformities to the new idolatry of chronological worshippers; the old monsters of Nineveh will be revived; and to prove Lord Jeffrey to be right, that there is no principle of beauty, many a hideous image will in arrangement claim affinity to the Venus de Medicis and the Apollo Belvidere. Really, all this is but a natural consequence of the first step in the system. It is to be, not art, but a history of art, to be shown by “specimens;” nor will it do to bring a brick even from Babylon as a specimen of its architecture. The public may rejoice in its ruin, or it would have to be brought in bodily, and a hundred or two crystal palaces added to our wonder of the world; as it is, there must be an “_hiatus maxime deflendus_.” We should have architecture, and “specimens” of architects of all the several countries and schools, as of pictures and painters. The English progress would be delightful to see. Holingshed says, that within the memory of many in his days, chimneys were rare; of course we must have “specimens.” We might go on indeed to weary the reader with absurdities, and it would only be following out Mr Dyce’s chronological idea in all its collateral branches; for, getting warm in riding his hobby, his heated imagination looks out for inconceivable vanishing points, which recede as fast as he finds them, till he sees in the unbounded space of art, which he thinks he has himself created, arts and sciences flying about in every direction, and crossing each other like so many dancing comets. The reader must look for a little incomprehensible language and confused utterance when Mr Dyce descends, having breathed the bewildering gas of his extraordinary sphere, to put his thoughts on paper, and thus he