We have been able to obtain access to the almost inaccessible collection of the Prince of Canino. The liberality with which the collections of foreign princes are thrown open to strangers and the public is often boasted of; but this liberality, we suppose, ceases when the same collections are exposed in this country for sale. The pictures of Lucien Buonaparte, which are valued at £40,000, are kept in most ‘vile durance’; and even the ticket of admission, which we presented to a person who seems placed at the door to keep persons out, and not to let them in, was inspected and objected to with the same scrupulous jealousy as if it had been a bank-note presented in payment of the purchase-money of the collection. A cursory glance round the room was sufficient to explain the source of so much mystery and caution. The pictures are in general mere trash. Nor is the general dearth of attraction relieved by even a few examples of first-rate excellence. The only exception to these remarks which struck us was an exquisite female head by Leonardo da Vinci. It is one of the finest specimens we have seen of that great master, both for expression, drawing, the spirit and delicacy of the execution, and the preservation of the tone of colouring. There is in Leonardo’s female heads a grace and charm of expression, which is peculiar to himself—a character of natural sweetness and playful tenderness, mixed up with the pride of conscious intellect, and with the graceful reserve of personal dignity. He blends purity with voluptuousness; and the expression of his women is equally characteristic of ‘the mistress or the saint!’ His pictures are always worked up to the utmost height of the idea he had conceived, with an elaborate felicity. No painter made more a religion of his art! His fault is, that his style of execution is too mathematical; that is, his pencil does not follow the graceful variety of nature, but substitutes certain refined gradations both of form and colour, producing equal changes in equal distances, with a mechanical uniformity. Leonardo was a man of profound learning as well as genius; and perhaps transferred too much of the formality of science to his favourite art. In making this objection, we have had in our eye two of the most celebrated pictures, the _Jocunda_ in the Louvre, and the _St. John_ in the possession of Mr. Hope. The picture in the present collection has more flexibility and variety; as well as greater heightening of colour; and perhaps the latter effect may be the cause of the former. It is not impossible that a certain degree of monotony may have been sometimes produced by the rubbing off of the higher tints and finishing touches of the pencil, so as to leave little more of the picture than the general ground-work.