"t h e *spectator " March 30th, 1850 LORD JOHN RUSSELL has
announced the Ministerial intentions with regard to the future of the Royal Academy, 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 composition called Trafalgar Square, is to find a lodging elsewhere. . . . When all this house-moving is going forward, surely it is the proper time to reconsider the whole subject of the National Gallery, its proper custody and lodgement. The supervision by dilettanti trustees has proved to be very questionable. The predictions as to the effects 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 anything but the finest sight in the world, eicept 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 compro- mises and stupendous tinkerings. That would cost more in the end ; and in these matters we are not administering only for the present generation. The Wilkin deformity is a mistake and waste of the past, for which we are paying in daily mortifica- tion, in daily inconvenience—since we cannot see our own pictures, crowded as they are into those confined ware- houses.. .
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