NATIONAL GALLERY AND ROYAL ACADEMY.
URGED by the aggressive demonstrations of Mr. Hume and others, Lord John Russell has announced the Ministerial intentions with regard to the future of the Royal Academy and the Vernon Col- lection; leaving the larger question of a suitable National Gallery unstated. The Royal Academy, joint-tenant with the National pictures in the paltry edifice that crowns the peep-show composi- tion called Trafalgar Square, is to find a lodging elsewhere ; being allowed time, however, and public money to provide its new abode withal. The Vernon pictures are to go to Marlborough House, Crown property now vacant; also any other pictures acquired by the public before the pal • Academicians make room for them in that false frontage miscall a National Gallery. There is much " Liberal " iud'gnation at this arrangement, for its too great leniency towards the Academicians. It is truly said that the Royal Academy of Art is not a public body—it has itself repudiated the liabilities of such a body ; and that, having no right to an abode which it now enjoys on sulk:ranee, it has no right to compensation. Most correct : the Academy has as little right to the promised boon, as the visitor who has overstaid his invitation for years has to make you, his injured host, pay his future rent in perpetuity. But to us that is the cmallcst and least interesing part of the question. And certain arc we of the one thing—that to a great power, whether a great potentate or a great nation, liberality even to munificence is a wise economy. The Royal Academy has just such a right as that acquired by the boy who trots along by your side in the hope of holding your horse after you have vouchsafed a benign smile of probability ; of the waiter whom the tavern-customer has permitted himself to order about; of the Lais at whose petit souper an official Alcibiades has con- sented to unbend. It is a right exclusively based on the great one's " own honour and dignity "; not a weak claim, however. England can better afford to pay needless money than to be mean. But in this matter really important questions do press for con- sideration, and the friends of art waste both time and energy if they expend their thoughts on the poor Academy and its pelf. Even the Vernon pictures--which, after all, are but a perpetuated Royal Academy exhibition, not of the very highest kind—are of small moment; though it is quite befitting national honour thatu hand- some gift accepted in the name of the nation should not be treated with indignity. For although the pictures in themselves are not of infinite value, the idea of the gift was a handsome trait in the retired horse-dealer, and it was handsomely completed in his life- time. The example of slighting his munificence tends to keep back other gifts and bequests even of a higher order ; and " gratitude " to Mr. Vernon is politic, if it be only in the casuistic sense that it is "a lively sense of future favours." But when all this house-moving is going forward, surely it is the proper time to reconsider the whole subject of the National Gal- lery, its proper custody and lodgement. The supervision by di- lettanti trustees has proved to be very. questionable. The predictions as to the effect of Mr. Wilkin's architecture have been fulfilled to the letter : a Brighton builder could surpass the general effect now produced by " the finest site in the world "—which is anythipg but the finest sight in the world, except in a sarcastic sense. It would be costly to pull down that structure and build a new one; but depend upon it, that it is better to undo a mistake than to enter upon a series of vast compromises and stupendous tinker- ings. That would cost more in the end ; and in these matters we are not administering only for the present generation. Tice Wit- kin deformity is a mistake and waste of the past, for which we are paying in daily mortification, in daily inconvenience—singe we cannot see our own pictures, crowded as they are into those confined washhonses : we are to pay in the promised compensation to the Royal Academy ; and unless we begin anew we shall pay no end of sums for alterations, adaptations, enlargements, improve- ments, extensions, additions, repairs, and finally—for the thing never can be made permanently tolerable—rebuilding. We can save much of all that threatened injury and loss by beginning aaaruewhi1c our hand is in. But to secure a proper conduct of the chhaanngg , and a proper management of the real National Gallery when it shall exist, we ought betimes to revise the management, with a view to place it on a sound and decorous footing:
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