Nor, indeed, when we view the state of our National Gallery, considering the building as well as what it contains, can we be induced to think that the Government are very much in earnest in their profession of a desire to raise its importance. The National Gallery has its committee, and there is the Commission of Fine Arts. The former like not a questioning Parliament, and have not sufficient confidence in themselves to disregard the uncomplimentary animadversions of a critical press; and so the National Gallery advances not. The latter appear to treat art too much as a taxable commodity, and as having a right to levy specimens, and take for the public the profit of them, when they are required to cater for any national works. We do not, however, doubt their sincere desire to promote the arts; but we do doubt if they are perfectly alive to the real importance of the work they have to do, and fear their efforts are rendered less useful by the number and conflicting tastes of the members. Divisions and subdivisions of responsibility terminate too frequently in many little things which, put together, do not make one great one. However deficient, or however faulty in our taste, there seems to be at the present moment a more general desire to become acquainted with art and its productions in former ages. Publications of historical and critical importance are not wanting; but it is singular that the prevailing patronage is little influenced as yet by the knowledge received. From whatever cause it may arise, the fact is manifest that we have not a distinct School of Art. It might be quite correct to assert, that there is no characteristic school, not one founded on a principle--a principle distinguished from former influences--in any country of Europe. We do not even except the German schools; for able though the men be and honoured, they show no symptom of an inventive faculty, which can alone make a school. They are as yet in their imitative state--in that of revival. They are in the trammels of an artistic superstition. They have no one great and new idea to realise. They make their commencement from art, not from mind--forgetful of this truth, that art cannot grow out of art: for, if good, it seduces the mind into mere imitation, which soon becomes effect; if bad, it incapacitates from conceiving the beautiful. Art cannot grow out of art; it may progress from its inferior to its better state, till the idea of its principle has been completed. It must then begin again from a new--from an idea not yet embodied--or it will inevitably decline, from the causes named, to mediocrity.