A LESSON FROM THE LOUVRE.
LTO THR EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—On my way from Vineland lately, where the vintage was abundant but was mostly gathered in bad weather, I spent a wet day at the Louvre, and saw the new "Salle Rnbens." It is very fine certainly, and embellished with great taste ; but, as for its contents, gorgeous though they are, I much prefer the old Salle Franeaise, with its Le Bruns, and its " Crnche Cassee," and a score of other marvels. Yet the Salle Rnbens set me thinking. Why, at the little Louvre we Great Britons built a while since on "the finest site in Europe," have we no "Salle Turner,"—no special room to show his splendid water-colours ? Over fifty years ago he be- queathed to-us a well-nigh priceless legacy of drawings, the most exquisite and delicately beautiful, deserving and demanding to be seen in a good light, so that their various charms be fully visible and valued. And we ungratefully and stupidly have left them ever since in an ugly sort of cellar, where, unless the sun be shining (which in London is but seldom), there is scarce light enough to see them, or at least to see them properly ; and where, when the sun is shining, as the cellar faces southward, the blinds must all be pulled down and the light is never steady. I remember meeting Mr. Ruskin once in this same cellar, and hearing him deplore the taste for national economy which prevented, as he thought, the proper housing of these treasures. As to their art-value for students, he considered they were quite priceless ; and as to their mere money-value, he said that many of them certainly were worth a thousand guineas; and be added, with some emphasis : "If they were sold at Christie's, and I happened to be bidding, I fancy that the thousand would soon go to fifteen hundred, ere the dealers let me have my pick of them." My memory is treacherous, but there still lingers in scene corner of it a fragment of a song which, when a schoolboy, I heard " pattered " by Charles Mathews in a burlesque by Planche :— " We've a national collection, where they never ask a fee at all, Besides the Vernon Gallery, a sight no ODC can see at all!"
I rather think the Vernon pictures, then lately given to the nation, were shown at first in the dark basement chamber which now holds the Turner water-colours. Since then they have been wisely taken to South Kensington, and placed in the uncouth but merely temporary building which was once nicknamed "the Boilers," and will shortly be supplanted by the now fast-rising Victoria and Albert Museum. If no better room be found for them in Trafalgar Square, might not the Turner water-colours there find a fitting show-place,—there in the far clearer light and ampler space available at Kensington P—I am, Sir, &e.,
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