WERE we not guilty of this very fault, we should, to begin with, say a word against the haste with which most of the reports of the Montpensier collection seem to have been written; but perhaps it is well to indicate, rather roughly at first, those pictures that seem to rouse deeper attention than the others, and to be the most likely to repay further serious study. This is all that we, at least, attempt. Care must be taken here, as always in studying works of art, to distinguish between excellences or defects of execution, - the language of art, - and those of thought and feeling which the language clothes. The former requires not only vast knowledge of technicalities, but also of the aspects of nature; and as this knowledge is possessed by comparatively few, few can rightly judge of execution. The thought and feeling expressed in art, however, are common to mankind, and only differ in degree and quality as a larger or smaller sum of the best human faculties have been called into exercise. Remembering this, we do not see how any one can fail to be delighted with No. 7, the head by Velasquez, from its color, still beautiful, and its simple, manly treatment; though not in Velasquez's best style, perhaps, it far exceeds in value for study the other pictures there. Of the other two pictures, Nos. 8 and 9, to which the name of Velasquez is attached, their close likeness to larger pictures certainly his, and the great inferiority of the latter to the former, render it very doubtful whether they are really his. Nothing very useful could be expected from Murillo, and the picture we have here (No. 6) is not of his best. Nor have the four pictures by Zuberan (Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4) more than an agreeable naturalistic richness of design and some peculiar though not refined merits of color; certainly there are none of the subtle qualities of the Velasquez head. Two landscapes by Salvator Rosa (Nos. 25 and 26) are interesting - especially when compared with the Turners in Mr. Norton's collection of last spring - as illustrating the truth of what Mr. Ruskin says of Salvator's morose fierceness of temper, nourished in the wild, melancholy Calabrian hills, and failing to see in them anything that was not gross and terrible. No. 26, the city on the hill with snow-capped mountains rising over it, serves indeed as the recorded defect of mediaeval landscape; but it is vain to seek for any expression of refined perception, on the part of the painter, or of either beauty or character in the rendering of mountain, cloud, or tree. The great cartoon of Kaulbach, almost impressive at first sight, appears, after but a brief examination, too mechanical for the work of a really imaginative artist; the equality of the pains expended on every bit of drapery and lock of hair suggests the attempt of a South Kensington student rather than that of a genuine artist, and the whole spirit is theatrical in its most vulgar sense. Every figure has taken its pose as in a tableau to be gazed at, and the want of unity of idea in the positions or faces is felt more painfully the longer the picture is examined.

For the rest, nothing good can be said, and the feeling of disappointment that arises on looking at these pictures of the Montpensier collection can hardly be dissipated by a careful study of even the best of them.