The National Gallery is, therefore, in a most commanding site, and from its broad steps a very fine view can be obtained of the Strand, Charing Cross, Parliament Street, and the Houses of Parliament.
The edifice was finished in 1838, and is 461 feet in length, and its greatest width across the saloons of painting is 56 feet. The stones were taken to construct it entirely from the King's Stables or Mews, and the building has a peculiarly sombre and solid effect. In it are a range of spacious galleries, whose walls are covered with the greatest works of the old masters and modern painters. It is the chief collection of paintings in the British Islands, and the number of subjects amount to 1,600. The number of pictures in the National Gallery, as compared with the number in the Continental galleries, is as follows: National Gallery, 1,600; Dresden Gallery, 2,000; Madrid, 1,833; Louvre, 2,500; Vienna, 1,500; The Vatican, 37; the Capitol, Rome, 250; Bologna, 280; Milan, 503; Turin, 563; Venice, 688; Naples, 700; Frankfort, 380; Berlin, 1,350; Munich, 1,300; Florence, 1,200; Pitti Palace, 500; Amsterdam, 386; Hague, 304; Brussels, 400; and Versailles, 4,000.
The pictures in the National Gallery are divided into the British and Foreign Schools. Of the British School there are 795 paintings of various artists, and of various degrees of merit, in which the names of every English painter of consequence is included by his works.
The chief collection in this division is that of Turner, the great colorist, and here are exhibited in a saloon by themselves the finest specimens of that great painter's works, in all numbering over one hundred subjects, which, together with a large collection of drawings and water colors, he bequeathed to the English people.
The Foreign School is sub-divided into the Italian, Spanish, Flemish, and French Schools, and these schools embrace 797 fine pictures, in which the old masters chiefly predominate. Three of Corregio's pictures in this gallery cost £15,000, and the latest acquisition is a Michael Angelo valued at £30,000.
The Gallery is open to the public on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays; and on Thursdays and Fridays to students only. It is open from Ten to Five from October until April 30, inclusive; and from Ten to Six from April until the middle of September. It is wholly closed during the month of October.
Daily this free gallery of art is thrown open to the working people who enjoy the paintings, excepting on the days specified. There is no charge whatever excepting for catalogues of the British and Foreign Schools, which cost a shilling each.
The question of opening the Galleries on Sunday has been much agitated of late, but I question if the British public, particularly the working or artisan class, care much for paintings. The lower classes of Englishmen are not, as a rule, very esthetical in their views or ideas, and I think the British masses are best calculated to shine at a cattle-show. There is nothing in this world so capable of striking an average Englishman's fancy as a huge ox or a mountain of moving beef.
Corregio's master pieces, Turner's flaming colors, or Claude's landscapes do not move him at all; but take him to a cattle-show, and behold he is all life and animation, and give him a pot of beer in his red fist, and he becomes positively witty, and capable of conversation.
WANT OF TASTE AMONG THE ENGLISH.