406 REVIEWS AND PAMPHLETS ON ART

power, is poorly represented by a single head;¹ and I ask, in the name of the earnest students of England, that the funds set apart for her Gallery may no longer be played with like pebbles in London auction-rooms. Let agents be sent to all the cities of Italy; let the noble pictures which are perishing there be rescued from the invisibility and illtreatment which their position too commonly implies, and let us have a national collection which, however imperfect, shall be orderly and continuous, and shall exhibit with something like relative candour and justice the claims to our reverence of those great and ancient builders, whose mighty foundation has been for two centuries concealed by wood, and hay, and stubble, the distorted growing, and thin gleaning of vain men in blasted fields.

I have the honour to be, Sir,

Your obedient servant,

THE AUTHOR OF “MODERN PAINTERS.”

Jan. 6.

¹ [The Bellini is the “Portrait of Doge Leonardo Loredano” (No. 189), purchased in 1844: for another remark on the picture, see p. 287; and for Ruskin’s estimate of Bellini, compare especially The Relation between Michael Angelo and Tintoret. Several other examples of Bellini have since been added to the Gallery (Nos. 280, 599, 726, 808, 812, 1233, 1440, 1455). The Van Eyck is the “Portrait of Jean Arnolfini and his Wife” (No. 186), purchased in 1842; for a description of it, see above, p. 256.]

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