The Gallery owes much to its accomplished director, Sir F. Burton, who is an artist of the Academic school, with much fine taste and feeling, and power of drawing. The days when men were trained in the schools, and when studies of the human figure (on one of which Mulready would expend months) were labours of love, are unhappily passed away. To Sir F. Burton’s admirable judgment we owe the real development of the collection, and its almost universal character. If we might make an objection, it would be that there is almost a surfeit of works of the earlier Italian school of the Pre-Raphaelite time, and there is something monotonous in the innumerable altar-pieces and sacred pieces set off with richly gilt and carved architectural framings. On the other hand, it is admitted that the English school is imperfectly represented. At the same time nothing could be more difficult than to form a really representative gallery of English works, owing to the shiftings of taste and criticism. This can be seen by considering the once-admired Vernon collection, where figure all the “Augustus Eggs” and “Redgraves,” and which seem scarcely worthy of a place in a public gallery. At the Academy Exhibitions we find every school imitated--French, German, Dutch. Still it would not be difficult to apply some principles in the selection, and to define what might be considered a purely English character in landscape, portraits, or _genre_. A serious difficulty is what to do with the accepted bequests which for half a century or so have held possession. These keep their place by virtue of law and Acts of Parliament, and as they entered in company with works of real value, there would be an ungraciousness in rejecting them. The pigments of this era seem to have faded: the pictures are flat, stiff, and, in some cases, seem the work of amateurs. One instance of this “white elephant” sort of donation is the picture of Rembrandt’s “Night Watch,” said to be a copy of no startling merit, which is yet allowed a conspicuous place.