The picture-gallery, opened to the public on appointed days, contains above a thousand pictures, which, filling fifteen rooms, are divided off into the three schools to which they belong—viz., Italian, Dutch, and German. The greater part of these pictures is said to have been purchased from French refugees at the time of the First Revolution, many families having then sought an asylum in Hungary and Transylvania. Mr. Boner, in his work on Transylvania, has thought fit to condemn in a wholesale manner the contents of this gallery as “wretched daubs fit only for a broker’s stall,” a verdict as rash as unjust, and which has since been refuted by the opinion of competent judges. Of course, in a small provincial town like Hermanstadt, situated at the extreme east of the Austrian empire, it would be unreasonable to expect to find in a private gallery collected in the eighteenth century priceless _chefs-d’œuvres_ of the kind we travel hundreds of miles to admire in the Louvre or at Dresden. No doubt, also, some of the paintings erroneously attributed to famous masters, such as Rubens or Titian, are but good copies of original works, while the parentage of a good number of others is unknown, or matter for guess-work. Granting all this, however, the wonder is rather, I think, to find such a very presentable collection of paintings of second and third rank in a small country town, among which no intelligent and straightforward connoisseur can fail to pass some hours without both pleasure and profit. The best picture in the gallery, and the most celebrated, is the portrait of Charles I. of England, and of his wife, Henrietta Maria, by Vandyck, which has brought many Englishmen hither in hopes of purchasing it. The library, now numbering about forty thousand volumes, is added to each year from part of the legacy attached to the Bruckenthal palace, and is a great boon to the town; for not only does it comprise a comfortable reading-room, to which any one may have gratuitous access, but all sorts of works are freely placed at the disposal of those who wish to study them at home, on condition of signing a voucher by which the party holds himself responsible for loss or damage to the work. The Bruckenthal library is indeed a great and valuable resource to those banished to this remote corner of the globe, and it is only surprising that more people do not avail themselves of the advantages which permit one to enjoy at home, sometimes for two or three months at a time, several valuable works of history, biography, or science. Some of the editions of older classical authors are most beautifully bound and illustrated with fine copperplates—perfect _éditions de luxe_, such as one rarely sees nowadays.[72]