have grown accustomed to. Delightful places they are to while away a spare half-hour in, but no longer places to call into exercise any serious thought. Both at the Old Society and at the Institute there was a great display of facility, skilful use of the more showy superficial technical qualities, clear bright colour, and dainty handling; only thought, fancy, feeling, and genius, were lacking or latent. In the old gallery were figure pieces of fully average ability and interest by Walter Duncan and Godwin; Boyce had, of course, a notable Farm House, and Davidson, Newton, Moore, and Alfred Hunt, several very clever landscapes. At the Institute there were Hine's and Collier's soft breezy downs; Wolf's animals; Cattermole's and Carrick's English figure pieces, and Gow's French and Flemish soldiers, all excellent of their kind, but none of superlative excellence.

The Seventh Winter Exhibition of Works by the Old Masters and by Deceased Masters of the British School, despite many sinister prophecies, showed no falling off in the number or quality of the works exhibited. The number, 281, was indeed larger than in the preceding year, and the selection not less interesting. The continued excellence of these exhibitions affords a remarkable illustration of the wealth of England in paintings of a high class, and of the liberality of their owners in thus year after year stripping the walls of their galleries or living rooms for months together of some of their most treasured decorations. To this exhibition, for example, the Queen contributed no fewer than 23 of her finest pictures from Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace; the Earl of Radnor 26, a choice collection in itself; the Duke of Sutherland 10; the Duke of Devonshire 7 ; Earl of Darnley 8; the Marquis of Lansdowne 8; the Earl of Mount Edgcumbe 6; the Duke of Westminster 6; the Baroness Burdett-Coutts 5; the Rt. Hon. W. Cowper-Temple 6; Sir W. G. Armstrong 5; Mr. Bingham Mildmay 12; Mr. Fuller Maitland, Mr. Wm. Wells, and Mr. Lewis Fry 6 each, and many other noted collectors in nearly equal proportions. A selection of the best pictures from our chief private collections thus brought together for leisurely study and comparison could not fail to be instructive as well as interesting. And its value grew upon you as you studied it. Apart even from the works of the great old masters, which were many and fine, there was quite a delightful series of our own older painters. Not only was the range wide but of several of the masters the specimens were numerous. Thus of the inexhaustible and always instructive Reynolds there were no fewer than 30 examples; of Gainsborough 15; of Hogarth 5; of Romney 6; Opie 4; Sir Thomas Lawrence 3. Old John Crome had 7 pictures, Callcott 3, Wilkie 2; and there were 3 by that erratic genius Fuseli, 3 by Morland, and others by Wilson, Turner, Etty, Constable, Stothard, Stark, Nasmyth, and many more. The history of English portraiture, at least from the reign of Charles I, might have been pretty well traced from this exhibition alone. First there was Vandyck, in whom modern English portraiture may be said

one

to have originated, with some 8 or 9 pictures, and among them an early and somewhat hard portrait of Charles's nephew, Prince Maurice, a less formal one of Prince Rupert, and one of Charles's daughter Elizabeth, who met an early death in captivity-all the property of Earl of Craven; the Duke of Devonshire's portrait of the first Earl of Burlington, the Duke of Sutherland's of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, the famous collector, and the Earl of Radnor's two noble portraits of the Countess of Monmouth and Catherine, Countess of Chesterfield. Rubens did not paint many English portraits, but his portraits were highly prized by Charles and his court, and studied, there can be no doubt, by English portrait painters; and in this exhibition were two of his most famous heads-the painter himself in his great Spanish hat, and his second wife, Helena Forman, both from Windsor Castle. Lely had only one portrait, the not very modest-looking Duchess of Cleveland; and Kneller a nameless ; and then came a halting and imperfect but still tolerably continuous line of Englishmen, beginning with John Greenhill, examples of whose pencil are now far from common, and who had a solidly painted and manly portrait of the learned Seth Ward, Savilian Professor of Astronomy, and Bishop successively of Exeter and Salisbury-the portrait being lent by the Corporation of the latter city. We cannot follow the line, and only adduce the illustration by way of showing how much more may, with a little consideration, be learned from these Winter Exhibitions than appears from a hasty glance. Passing from the opening to the culminating point of English portrait art in Sir Joshua Reynolds-and there was a portrait of Lady Catherine Parker by Thomas Hudson, Reynolds's master, to mark the gloom from which he emerged-we had the exquisite portraits of Mrs. Bouverie and her child, and of Miss Morris as Hope nursing Love; and the children of the first Lord Barrington, as samples of the way in which children from their mother's knee till expanding into full-grown youth were painted by the prim old bachelor as children were never painted before or since. Mrs. Abington biting her thumb, and Kitty Fisher dissolving the pearl, showed how he could paint "saucy hizzies" as well as sober matrons. The fine intellectual head of Archbishop Markham and the placid self-satisfied "citizen of credit and renown," John Paterson, the magnificent portrait of Lord Chancellor Thurlow in his State robes-looking wiser than anybody ever was-and the noted group of John Dunning Lord Ashburton, William Shelburne Marquis of Lansdowne, and Col. Barré, testified to his power, unapproached in recent times, of painting intelligent men. Gainsborough's men were of inferior mark, but there were some of his women grace itself the somewhat stately Lady de Dunstanville; the pretty "Cottage Girl," evidently a portrait of some dainty young lady masquerading in peasant's attire and not over anxious to maintain the disguise; Anne, the witching wife of the second Earl of Radnor; a courtier's portrait of plain old Queen Charlotte; and a more fascinating one, though only

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a sketch (lent, like the last, by the Queen) of the lovely and unhappy Perdita (Mrs. Robinson). But the picture which more than any other showed Gainsborough's supremacy of charm (that indescribable something, beyond even grace, which nothing can describe and no other word suggest), was that catalogued as "Ladies walking in the Mall of St. James's Park,” of which Sir John Neeld is the enviable possessor, and which, more than any other picture of Gainsborough's painting, more than almost any other picture here exhibited, we should like tɔ see in the National Gallery, a picture which painters who nowa-days pourtray (or libel) our divine fair, would do well to make the object of long, patient, and devout worship. There were other good portraits of ladies--the Countess of Sutherland, the bright-eyed Mrs. Carew, the graceful Countess of Carlisle, and Nelson's Lady Hamilton, by Romney; the grandiose Mrs. Siddons, by heavy-pencilled Hamilton, and pretty saucy Peg Woffington, by Hogarth the inimitable. Four portraits of David Garrick furnished an uncommon opportunity of forming an estimate of the man, and of comparing the styles and capacities of the portrait painters of his time. First there was the curiously characteristic portrait by Hogarth, which some of our readers may have seen at Windsor Castle, in which the actorauthor is seated in dreamy mood, while his wife, who has crept stealthily behind his chair, is taking from his hand the pen with which he has just completed his "Prologue to Taste." Garrick is unmistakably true, but Mrs. Garrick delightful: if he had painted no other female face this would have sufficed to shame those who said that Hogarth was no painter. Reynolds's portrait was true and characteristic, but hardly one of his best. Gainsborough's-the Stratford-on-Avon commemoration portrait presented by Garrick to the town after the masquerading there in 1769, and lent for exhibition by the Corporation has a very theatrical air, but Mrs. Garrick pronounced it the best portrait ever painted of her Davy. The fourth was Dance's, prosaic enough to please anybody. In it the great actor-in a grey coat and in profile-was figured contemplating the medal of Shakspere struck in commemoration of the jubilee, and was therefore a year or two later in date than Gainsborough's.

This is not the place, or we should have liked to notice the extension of the National Gallery, the appearance of the collection now that for the first time all the national pictures have been brought together in a home worthy of them, and particularly the important addition made by the munificent bequest of Mr. Wynn Ellis. As it is, we can only recommend our readers to visit the gallery whilst it retains its primal freshness. And not less strongly do we recommend a visit to the splendid collection of pictures from Althorp so liberally lent by Earl Spencer for temporary exhibition at South Kensington.

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THE MUSIC OF THE YEAR 1876.

THE musical record of each year as it passes, although furnishing plentiful evidence of the earnestness of the professor and the enthusiasm of the amateur conveys with ever-increasing force the lesson which is taught with no uncertain voice in almost every other phase of nineteenth century life-that permanent and perfect work is being sacrificed to the exigencies of the hour. In some cases, as was suggested in the "Companion to the Almanac for 1876," composers are overworked as teachers, and cannot afford to devote themselves to the creative function when the means of existence are more easily obtained by the giving of lessons, the conduct of classes, or perhaps by concert-room performances, while in other instances the golden bait of the publisher, who cares more for the presence of a popular name on a title-page than for the actual value of the work, tempts the composer to write for the moment, and to sacrifice his ultimate reputation and position in the artistic commonwealth to the momentary demands of the public. Illustrations under both heads might readily be supplied, but in all probability the reader will, without difficulty, fill in the names for himself, and in any case it is not too much to say that the leading representatives of English music belong respectively to the classes we have indicated. And of many other English composers the same must be said, so that, instead of being able to point year after year to works which are worthy to take their place beside those of the masters of the past, we are compelled to rest satisfied with a comparatively small contribution to our shelves, and, even then, to accept workmanship of an order absolutely inferior to that which we have a right to expect. Music, in fact, suffers in this country from that very progress in its practical cultivation which is in some respects so desirable, and the consequence is, that while we are in a transitional state, and are passing from comparative popular ignorance of the art to a moderate acquaintance with and appreciation of its beauties, the musician on the one hand is almost compelled by force of circumstances to become a teacher, while on the other the education of the people is not sufficiently advanced to cause them to demand high class works to such an extent as to make it a remunerative task to supply them. Whether, as musical education becomes more general, the condition of affairs will improve until not only the teacher will be less necessary, but the composer will find a market for the best of his writings, remains to be seen, and although there are those who affirm that the English lack the "je ne sais quoi," which makes a German instinctively a worshipper of Mozart or Beethoven, while the Briton is content with a homely ballad, there are not wanting signs of an increasing appreciation of the good and true sufficient to justify the anticipation of still better things. At any rate, that the music of the future must to a very great extent depend upon the teaching of the present is obvious, and if tastes are formed on good models,

if the child's first pieces for the pianoforte are taken from a "Schumann Album," or from some kindred work, instead of from a collection of worthless, albeit tuneful adaptations of negro melodies and operatic gems; if our young choristers are led to practice the healthy part music, which, whether sacred or secular, is the noblest legacy of our musical fathers; and, above all, if the art is taught in an intelligent fashion the enforcement of its laws being preceded by the inculcation of sound principles, we shall soon arrive at a healthier condition of affairs.

This being so, it follows naturally that our first inquiry, in looking at the work of the past year, must be directed to the provisions for musical education, and, in this matter, the progress of 1875 has been satisfactory. At the Royal Academy of Music the number of pupils has risen to the highest point ever reached since its foundation in 1822, and at the presentation of the prizes, on the 21st of July—a duty gracefully performed by Mdlle. Nilsson-the Principal was able to announce that there were 336 students on the books. The number of scholarships, giving the right to free or partly free education, has been considerably increased, and, in addition to the Goss Scholarship recently established by the exertions of the College of Organists, there is now a Balfe Scholarship to swell the goodly list. At Kensington, the National Training School, the objects of which were fully detailed in the "Companion to the Almanac for 1876," is now an established fact, the building munificently presented by Mr. Freake having been opened, without ceremony, for the reception of students on the 17th of May, by the Duke of Edinburgh and the Duke of Connaught. Upwards of fifty scholars were entered on the books on the opening day, the necessary funds for their education having been supplied by public bodies, by subscriptions in various localities, and by individuals. In each case the scholarship had been first thrown open to competition. The training school has for its Principal Dr. Arthur Sullivan, who is assisted by several able professors. As to the fears which have been more than once expressed, in regard to the evil effects of attempting to maintain two national music schools in a country which has hitherto shown but little disposition to support even one such institution in a satisfactory manner, it cannot be said that they have been altogether removed, and the utmost that can be asserted on the subject is that, as the directors of the Royal Academy have never appealed to the country with the energy which the promoters of the younger institution have shown, the funds obtained would probably have been lost, if the Society of Arts had not taken up the work. Shortly after the opening of the Kensington school, the Society intimated its intention of discontinuing the examinations in elementary music, which it had conducted for some years, with Dr. Macfarren and Dr. Hullah as the examiners, and at which a considerable and increasing number of candidates had gained certificates. On this announcement being made, the Editor of the "Choir" suggested that the examinations should be taken up by the Council of Trinity