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THE BLUE BOOR ON THE NATIONAL GALLERY.
Months ago, "the Select Committee appointed to inquire into the Management of the National Gallery, also to consider in what mode the collective monuments of antiquity and fine art possessed by the nation may be most securely preserved, judiciously augmented, and ad- vantageously exhibited to the public "—(such is their voluminous title)— presented their Report ; and within these few weeks we have been in possession of the Minutes of Evidence on which that report is founded. The gift is a large one, whatever may be the opinions of its value ; 1015 pages of the blue book—a form better known than loved. Here we may learn exactly what point of wide-mouthed denunciation Mr. Morris Moore reached, and clothed in the trenchant and ready eloquence of counsel for the prosecution ; what precise amount of self-involvement the difficulties of his position or shortcomings of his administration reduced Mr. 'Twins to, and what shade of difference between angry recrimination and down- right abuse be preserved in retorting upon Mr. Moore ; how far Sir Charles Eastlake was too free and easy, and how far he was vexatiously obstructed, in his term of Keepership; how many excellent suggestions a Trustee of the National Gallery is capable of concocting or acquiescing in, which he never dreamed of taking measures for carrying into practice; and what proportion politeness bears to strict matter-of-fact in the judg- ment passed by the Committee upon the Trustees individnally. All this, and much other matter similarly interesting to such as enter with zest into either the technicalities of art generally or an inquiry which often approaches a scandal, are to be found in the Minutes of Evidence.
Wehave already* discussed the Report of the Committee, and enumerated its main features and recommendations. On reading the evidence, we are impressed with the businesslike care and perseverance which the members displayed in conducting their inquiries. Colonel blure's draught report we conceive to have presented a very comprehensive digest and estimate of the case ; and, though the report as finally adopted appears to us to differ from this, where it does differ, for the worse,—especially in its proposed retention of Trustees rather than a single responsible Director of the highest available attainments,—still the Committee have on the whole done their duty zealously and honestly. Certainly, they do not "set down aught in malice" ; and if, here and there, a disposition to 4 extenuate" is perceptible, it is not perhaps, as the world goes, so very flagrant a derogation from Spartan virtue to let down as easily as may be the instruments of a condemned system—amenable as they clearly are to a share in the blame. At any rate, such a course of procedure is natural ; and especially so when the oldest, and probably one who has of yore been among the most active of the Trustees—all men of position and influence—is the Prime Minister of the very Government whose co- operation will have to be invoked for removing the propositions of the Committee out of the region of theory into that of fact.
• Spectator of 27th August 1853, p. 830. Upon the main questions arising on the evidence we have little to add to what we said before ; as the report took them up candidly and con- &latently on the whole, and the minute', when they do not confirm the views there expressed, illustrate rather than disclose for the first time some hitch in the reasoning or stopping-short in the coaclusions of the Committee. The vices and feasible remedies of the present system of management, the mistakes in purchasing and the projected removal of the gallery under conditions which will admit of its amalgamation with our other art-collections, may safely be left, so far as they are matter for seri- ous discussion, at the point to which the Committee have advanced them in preparation for the ulterior decision of Parliament. We shall rather
dip into the evidence for samples of its whimsical contradictions itsdamaging revelations, and its piquant details; and propose to return to it
with this object at a future opportunity.
At present, we touch further only upon one question on which we ex- pressed dissent from the course adopted by the Committee—that of not recording any opinion of their own as to the effects of the cleanings which formed so conspicuous a topic of their investigations. We still think that they should have specified the impression produced upon their minds by the joint influences of personal observation and the balance of evidence; but this simply in proof of having bestowed ample thought on a subject upon which the public are so sensitive. As for any conclusive value which their opinion would possess, or even the possibility of bringing the several members to acquiesce in any general resolution, both are manifestly out of the question. The minutes of evidence show, what was indeed as well known if not as vividly brought into light before, that no two men can be got to agree on the subject. The first will protest with the most solemn affirmations and detailed statements that every one of the pictures is ruined ; the second thinks the Sheba scandalously misused, but the Veronese restored to the original condition it was in on leaving the easel; the third will not perceive much difference in either of these, but insists that it was madness to touch the Poussin, and sees a distinct sinister pur- pose against Rubens's reputation in the treatment of the St. Bavon ; to the optimistic eyes of the Keeper, everything is rose-colour—if we may use such a term in speaking of a gentleman who so indignantly repudiates the theory of a general toning-glaze • and a fifth is quite positive that no one could tell what the pictures really were before the cleaning, or will be again in the course of years. It cannot but be inferred, therefore, that confusion would only have been worse confounded hid the Com- mittee attempted to meet in any broad generality upon the effects of the operation. But we do not see that this need have deterred the Chairman or some other leading member from proposing a resolution as to its main result, whether for better or for worse, on the set of works seriatim, and leaving it to be carried or rejected by the published votes of the majority,
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