What private organisation gives the citizens of this country the
greatest opportunity for the most innocent and permanent of pleasure?. After looking at the exhibition this week at the National Gallery, I am inclined to think the verdict should go to the National Art-Collections Fund. Apart from the Fund's most famous acquisi- tions, the Rokeby Venus, the Colmar° Titian, Rembrandfs Saskia as Flora, the Luttrell Psalter, there are here a host of other pictures and drawings which will always be among the nation's most precious possessions, and these represent only a part of the Fund's achieve- ments. I myself must confess that on my first visit I never got past the first picture that met my eye, a vast and wonderful panorama by Niccolo del' Abbate, which I had not seen before, and for a moment I forgot all the privations of the last six years and the uncertainties of the years to come. There are neither privations nor uncertainties here ; and I was glad that in the middle of his preoccupations with atom bombs and the sovereignty of nations last
week, Mr. Eden was able to find time to open the Exhibition. * * * *
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