FOOTNOTES
[25] Mr. T. Fairbairn is usefully striving to establish a public Gallery of Art at Manchester; but however rich it may become in local resources, specimens of Beato Angelicos, Raffaelles, and the like, successively introduced, for a season, from time to time, would have a very beneficial influence on the tastes of the visitors.
[26] So much doubt and ignorance exists on the subject of the tenure by which the Royal Academy holds its premises, that the official answer of Henry Howard, the Keeper, has been exhumed from parliamentary records to remove them. Mr. Howard says:—
“There are no expressed conditions on which the apartments at Somerset House were originally bestowed on the Royal Academy. The Royal Academy of Arts took possession of the apartments which they occupy in Somerset House, in April 1780, by virtue of a letter from the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury to the Surveyor General, directing him to deliver over to the Treasurer of the Royal Academy, all the apartments allotted to his Majesty’s said Academy in the new buildings at Somerset House, which are to be appropriated to the uses specified in the several plans of the same heretofore settled.”
“The Royal Academy received these apartments as a gift from their munificent founder, George the Third; and it has always been understood by the members that his Majesty, when he gave up to the government his palace of old Somerset House (where the Royal Academy was originally established), stipulated that apartments should be erected for that establishment in the new building. The Royal Academy remained in the old palace till those rooms were completed which had been destined for their occupation; plans of which had been submitted to their approval, and signed by the president, council, and officers.”