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SCOTTISH ART BODIES.
A minute of the Lords of the Treasury, dated the 25th February, makes a clean sweep of the system of arrangements for art-purposes in Scotland, centralized in Edinburgh ; and public opinion, as far as we have noticed its expression, is in favour of the change.
The great turning-point is the affiliation to the Department of Science and Art of the long-established school of the "Board of Trustees," as its name is abbreviated, in Edinburgh; That capital was the stronghold hitherto of an independent action in the way of art • and note the net- work of the Government Department covers it also. The " Depart- tnent" goes on annexing and annexing and its fiat threatens soon to be the sole fiat of art-education in the United Kingdom. No one can blame an active body—and the Department of Science and Art is emi- nently active as well as eminently well-backed—for taking into its own hands business which another body allows to stagnate, if the latter will not, or cannot, "show fight," and manage its own business for itself. In the present case, it appears that the Board of Trustees has not got the sinews of war, or of work, in any adequate measure. It needs Govern- ment support; and Government offers it the benefit of the powerful organization already existing in the Department. The Board may have been only discreet in accepting : yet it 113 not without some regret that we see the absorption, or virtual extinction, of a system which has lasted long, and done, we believe, good service in its time.
Subsidiary to this arrangement are others affecting the Scottish Na- tional Gallery, the Museum of Antiquaries, and the Royal Scottish Academy ; all apparently adapted to give greater and earlier public pro- minence to the several interests and collections concerned.
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