A Descriptive, Explanatory, and Critical, Catalogue of Fifty of the Earliest Pictures: Contained in the National Gallery of Great Britain (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from A Descriptive, Explanatory, and Critical, Catalogue of Fifty of the Earliest Pictures: Contained in the National Gallery of Great Britain

It is, presumptively, this hasty changing of the scenes, in consequence of the mercenary root of estimation, and even of existence, to which everything in our Mammon island is doomed, -unless we shall be enabled to except the National Gallery and the British Museum - It is - at least in some measure, this haste, where cuniary and mental profit stand opposed to each other, t at has given such a careless, flippant, su rficial, temporary, touch-and go, air and character, to t e rinted notices - sometimes with temerarious and unblus ing stolidit or effrontery called Critical Dissertations on works 0 Art, (including the National Gallery, ) which abound in the periodical pub lications, and which have reduced and de raded the art or science of picture-criticism to a state so iscreditably low, at the very time when sound and accurate criticism is most especially wanted. Doctor Aynero Tirteafuera, who (as we are informed by Cervantes) has a salary for taking care of the governor's health, and is consequently more careful of it than of his own, has been as successful in persuading his English patient of the propriety and wisdom of his a pointment and his ministration, as In the potent touch of is whalebone wand; and who is to coun tervail his proceedings, if the lord governor is satisfied to allow his most exquisite dishes to fly from before him, and that he is to feast no otherwise than according to the use and custom of other islands where there are governors.

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