possessions of the American multi-millionaire-to use a vile yet expressive phrase-are also the lovely Fragonards of Grasse, that beautiful decoration of the Salon Malvilain there, which shows the very flower of his brilliant, joyous, passionate art, and is therefore not easily appreciable at its true worth by those who persist in looking upon it as so much wall decoration, and as that only. Then there are in the Morgan collection a genuine Velazquez, 'The Infanta Maria Teresa,' the superb Genoese Van Dyck, 'A Lady and Child,' now at the Academy; several Sir Joshuas, including the beautiful portrait group, 'Lady Betty Delmé and her children' (acquired from Mr. Wertheimer), and Mrs. Payne-Gallwey carrying her child pick-a-back'; Gainsboroughs far finer in quality than the much advertised 'Duchess'; the exquisite Romney known as 'Emma Lady Hamilton reading news of Nelson's Victory'; the popular and often reproduced Master Lambton' of Sir Thomas Lawrence; and celebrated landscapes by Turner and Constable.

And now, what can we do to protect ourselves, without undue injury to the individual, from the rising tide, the Napoleonic invasion and annexation by the force of capital, with which we are threatened in the near future. In France they have a charming Société des amis du Louvre, a union of patriots and passionate artlovers which in a modest way does much to help the great central museum of France, already so overwhelmingly rich as to need little help from without. With revenues which do not amount to 50,000 francs per annum they have brought into the Louvre, among other things, the beautiful Virgin and Child' ascribed to Piero della Francesca, but really by Alessio Baldovinetti, and, more recently, a magnificent Flemish tapestry of the fifteenth century. A much more serious and redoubtable organisation is that of the already mentioned Kaiser-Friedrich-Museums-Verein of Berlin, a society of Berlinese connoisseurs and collectors in close touch with the royal museums of that city, and whose chief rôle it is to step forward and help those establishments when they have in view some work eminently desirable, which their resources may not for the time being permit them to acquire direct. They have done good service already, and to us in a corresponding degree disservice. I have already shown how the 'Portrait of an Elderly Man,' by Holbein, from the Millais collection, was acquired by this Verein, and then in due course passed on to the Berlin Gallery. Some such society as these two, which flourish, and vindicate their right to existence, in Paris and Berlin, would be of manifest utility in England. There have indeed been temporary organisations of the same type over here: as when a group of noblemen and gentlemen with splendid generosity assisted the nation to purchase the Longford pictures for the National Gallery; and again when a similar group stepped in to cooperate with the British Museum in the purchase of the so-called

'Pichon' cup of gold, adorned with translucent basse-taille enamels, an altogether unique example of French goldsmith's work of the end of the fourteenth century. But let us not deceive ourselves. Such a society as this, though it would undoubtedly render great service— even more effectually in the part of the watchful sentinel at the gate, ready at any moment to give the alarm, than in that of the David prepared to do battle with Goliath-such a society could not stand unaided against the weak within the realm and the strong without. For every Gretchen, possessed of a jewel of great price, is now assailed not only by the eager Faust, who covets the treasure and will not be gainsaid, whatever the price to her or to him; she is solicited, fascinated, and in too many instances undone by the Tempter, whose business and profit it is to do the bidding of the overpowering and in his haste wholly ruthless wooer. The good angel who should back up the weak-kneed Gretchen, and with flaming brand drive from his prey the Mephisto of the occasion, must be an official good angel, armed with the necessary powers of offence and defence; or, in default of these, with a weapon of the same character as those with which she is assailed-with sword and shield of gold. It has been shown how the Hamilton Palace Collection, the Blenheim Palace Collection, the Dudley Collection, the Ashburnham Collection, the Francis Hope Collection, among others, are things of the past; how too many others have been marred and diminished; how single masterpieces have been uprooted and carried off by the compelling force of capital, which is in itself a kind of violence. There remain to Great Britain many other noble galleries, many other great artistic possessions, in the maintenance of which as part of the appanage of great houses, and in another sense as part of the national treasure, as part of the national glory, every art lover, nay, every British citizen, is, or should be, vitally concerned. I need hardly refer to the collections of Bridgewater House, Dorchester House, Grosvenor House, Panshanger, Althorp, Petworth House, Wilton House, Longford Castle, Gosford House, Chatsworth, Lockinge, Kingston Lacy-to name only a few of the most important in quality as in magnitude. The collections of the great house of Rothschild at Waddesdon, at Tring Park, at Halton, and in London are for obvious reasons on a different footing, and as to these, so rich in the finest English pictures, no anxiety need surely be felt. We owe a debt of gratitude-relatively if not always absolutely-to another group of collectors, who are by degrees replacing those of former generations: to Mr. George Salting, Mr. Ludwig Mond, Mr. R. H. Benson, Mr. Julius Wernher, Mr. Alfred Beit, Mr. E. J. Taylor, and others of the same stamp, who have on many occasions come forward when otherwise a great work would have been sucked in and carried out of the country on the crest of the gigantic wave. But in respect of these collections the same stability cannot be claimed or expected as we

may legitimately implore, if not demand, as regards the famous historic galleries some of which have been above enumerated.

There exists in England no legal power that can prevent a man, if he be so minded, or if his necessities compel him, from bartering a great picture or work of art against a great price, whether offered by his fellow-countryman or the alien. And, alas, it would seem, judging by the experiences of the last twenty years, that there is no moral power! And yet, is there no way? It were mere midsummer madness to expect that the Legislature should impose restrictions and penalties similar to those which Italy has enacted, and now, to meet the odious and in many instances criminal machinations of the principal and the agent, finds herself compelled from day to day more rigorously to enforce. This much, however, we may surely claim from the gentleman, and the civis Britannicus. There are certain great works which under no circumstances should ever again be allowed to leave our shores-works in respect of which, it can never be too often repeated, the owner is morally, if not legally, the trustee for England, and in a larger sense for the world. If the owner of any of these be resolved, or by his necessities compelled, to sell, let him still be mindful of his trusteeship. Let him not surreptitiously, in the hushed quiet of dark closets, make his bargain with the agent of the foreigner, offering the biggest price, and with it the promise of a secrecy that can never be maintained. Let him boldly come forward, and offer his treasure in the first instance to the Government for a national museum, or to that museum direct; or failing this, to a municipal or provincial gallery; or, if there be no response in these quarters, then to an Englishman, or a collector permanently domiciled in England. This is a case in which patriotism and a sense of the responsibility tacitly undertaken with the ownership of a great masterpiece should prompt even the needy owner to accept a lower price from the nation than he would claim. from the individual especially from the marauder attacking from without. He who, regardless of his manifest duties in this respect, either procures or accepts such secret bargains as are to the detriment of the nation and in defeat of its moral rights, must, in my humble opinion, be deemed a citizen who has forfeited his claims to citizenship by preferring the private good to the public weal.

But, if we cannot with any hope of success ask the Legislature to make enactments and impose penalties, may we not legitimately hope that, before it is too late, the Government will seek to obtain from Parliament powers large enough to enable it to meet a great and ever growing danger, with which, swelling as it is daily to wholly unmanageable proportions, the patriotism, the zeal, the self-sacrifice of the individual are manifestly not able, unsupported, to cope? The sums needed for an effectual intervention of this order would doubtless be large. But would they amount in all to more than half

the price of a single battleship of the first class? And the great works of art which would be in question—those to retain possession of which is a matter of vital moment-are much more, at this stage of their existence, than merely great creations of the painter or sculptor. They are the very essence of the time to which they belong, greater and more enduring landmarks in the inner, the truer life of a nation, than the wars, the political disturbances, the civic upheavals, than all the strife, the storm and stress that lies on the surface. They are of the time out of which they issue the great and permanent expression, stripped of what is accidental and ephemeral - the strong, clear flame soaring high above the sordid realities which the many accept as the essential facts, the essential truths of existence. They are the very heart, the very soul of the nation, as of the individual; without which there must be spiritual death, for the one as for the other.

CLAUDE PHILLIPS.

It is always more interesting to discuss a subject still under debate than to adduce fresh grounds for a foregone conclusion. As a poet, Mr. Stephen Phillips stands beyond question. Critical opinion varies as to the worth of his work, but he has been accepted by the mass of readers as were only half a dozen or so of poets by the English race in the last century. No man,' said Swift, finely, 'was ever written down but by himself,' and Mr. Phillips shows no leaning in that direction. There is perhaps nothing in Ulysses equal to the fused and glowing splendour of the last act in Herod; but as a whole the composition seems to me to stand higher than either of its predecessors. As a stage-play we have not yet the same means of complete comparison: but it pleases me infinitely better than Herod, and as a stage-play chiefly I propose to consider it, because on the position of Mr. Phillips as playwright minds are not yet fully made up. And here a certain humility is imposed upon the amateur, ignorant of all but one in every score of the theatrical pieces which are produced in London, when he finds himself at variance with the great bulk of expert opinion. Broadly speaking, those gentlemen whose business or inclination leads them to make an exhaustive study of contemporary drama, to see and appreciate not only the Gay Lord Quex and Mrs. Dane's Defence but also such masterpieces as Kitty Grey, Are You a Mason? The Sign of the Cross, Sherlock Holmes, and A Cigarette Maker's Romance, together with the pantomimes, musical farces and comedies, and those scintillations of talent which alternate with biographs and acrobats in the music halls all these gentlemen were either puzzled or bored by Ulysses; and if they did not unanimously describe it as dreary or tedious, they were perfectly agreed that it was undramatic. Two things embolden me to express my dissent, and to justify the keen pleasure derived from the performance which they censure. The first is that in their capacity of prophets these critics have seemingly been at fault. Ulysses is being played to crowded houses, whose temper cannot, I think, be mistaken (though the first-night audience, which I should have called enthusiastic, was described by the critics as cold and listless). This is a vulgar test, and I only insist upon it because