Mrs Jameson makes a very good remark upon a deficiency in catalogues of galleries and collections--the omission of the name of the church or chapel, or the confraternity, whence the pictures were purchased, and such history as might be known respecting them. Our collectors, indeed, are not without their picture-pedigrees; but they are of a curious kind--rather too expressive of a fear of dupery of dealers, and implying but little good foundation of taste in purchasers. Picture-pedigrees refer not to an inherent virtue, visible as the pure blood of the Arabian courser, but to the supposed taste or better known wealth of the last possessor. Few pictures stand on their own merits--they acquire a virtue from the hands or houses they have passed through, more than from the hands that worked them. Indeed, the known collector is generally the only authenticity of the painter, and stamps the value. But to say somewhat of pictures of sacred subjects--and they are by far the finest in known collections--from this deficiency in the catalogues much of their interest is lost; not only so, but we see them in the midst of strange incongruities, as well as injured in their effect by locality, and by light unsuited to them. We cannot judge fairly of their real excellence, nor understand the actual religious power they once possessed. Many of them were painted for private chapels or oratories, and purposely, perhaps, for dim religious light; for an intimate communion of the devout with the one sentiment and with it alone. We have often earnestly wished that, in building national galleries, the large and ostentatious display, at one view, were not the object, and that the particular character of our greatest works were well considered, and fit positions given, and proper lights adjusted. It would be a great thing, for instance, to see the "Raising of Lazarus" of Sebastian del Piombo, in our National Gallery, in a room by itself, and under a studied and arranged light. It is now where it is not all, and at all times, visible; and it is far too important in itself, of too impressive a character, for the look of one passing moment, and the distraction of many things. In the Vatican the Apollo has a room to himself. Picture galleries should not emulate the show-rooms of trade. If the pictures are irrecoverably removed from their own birthplace, from their own home, separated from their local history and interest, much may still be done, in some degree, to preserve for them their general character, and to allow them to make the intended general impression. And it is in fact for this purpose that we highly estimate this work of Mrs Jameson, that, in referring to these legends, we may read the productions to which they have given rise.