represented, with the sole exception of the French school. This, however, can be amply studied at Hertford House (Wallace Collection), which, besides Dutch, Spanish and British pictures of the highest value, contains twenty examples of Greuze, fifteen by Pater, nineteen by Boucher, eleven by Watteau and fifteen by Meissonier. The national gallery of pictures at Berlin (Kaiser Friedrich Museum), like the British National Gallery, is remarkable for its variety of schools and painters, and for the select type of pictures shown. During the last twenty-five years of the 19th century, the development of this collection was even more striking than that of the English gallery. Italian and Dutch examples are specially numerous, though every school but the British (here as elsewhere) is really well seen. The purchase grant is considerable, and is well applied. Two other German capitals have collections of international importance—Dresden and Munich. The former is famous for the Sistine Madonna by Raphael, a work of such supreme excellence that there is a tendency to overlook other Italian pictures of celebrity by Titian, Giorgione and Correggio. Munich (Old Pinakothek) has examples of all the best masters, the South German school being particularly noticeable. The arrangement is good, and the methods of exhibition make this one of the most pleasant galleries on the continent. Vienna has the Imperial Gallery, a collection which in point of number cannot be considered large, as there are not more than 1700 pictures. This, however, is in itself a safeguard, like the wise provision in a statute of 1856 for enabling the English authorities to dispose of pictures “unfit for the collection, or not required.” It avoids the undue multiplication of canvases, and the overcrowding so noticeable in many Italian galleries where first-rate pictures hang too high to be examined. Thus the Viennese gallery, besides the intrinsic value of its pictures (Albert Dürer’s chief work is there), is admirably adapted for study. The best gallery in Russia (St Petersburg, Hermitage) was made entirely by royal efforts, having been founded by Peter the Great, and much enlarged by the empress Catherine. It contains the collections of Crozat, Brühl and Walpole. There are about 1800 works, the schools of Flanders and Italy being of signal merit; and there are at least thirty-five genuine examples by Rembrandt. The French collection (Louvre Palace, Paris) is one of the most important of all. In 1880 it was undoubtedly the first gallery in Europe, but its supremacy has since been menaced by other establishments where acquisitions are made more frequently and with greater care, and where the system of classification is such that the value of the pictures is enhanced rather than diminished by their display. In 1900 it was partly rearranged with great effect. The feature of the Louvre is the Salon Carré, a room in which the supposed finest canvases in the collection are kept together, pictures of world-wide fame, representing all schools. It is now generally accepted that this system of selection not only lowers the standard of individual schools elsewhere by withdrawing their best pictures, but does not add to the aesthetic or educational value of the masterpieces themselves. In Florence the Tribuna room of the Uffizi gallery is a similar case in point. Probably the two most widely known
