It is true that the existing great galleries come into the market only for pictures specially wanted to fill some important gap in their series, for which they pay prices that would startle our public economists.  America will have to undergo the competition, even if she now enters this field, of several important foreign galleries in the process of formation, among which are those of Manchester, with a subscribed capital, as a beginning, of L100,000; of the Association of St. Petersburg, for the same purpose, under the patronage of the Imperial Family; and of one even in Australia.”

Mr. Jarves’s collection is not confined by any means to what may be called the curiosities of Art.  It contains one hundred and twenty-five pictures; and, rich as it is in works that mark the successive stages of development in Italian painting, it possesses also specimens of its later and most perfect productions.  Examples of the pure Byzantine bring us to those of the Greco-Italian school, and these to the early Italian, represented (in its Umbrian branch) by Cimabue, by Giotto and his followers, the Gaddi, Cavallini, Giottino, Orgagna, and others; while of the Sienese we have Duccio, Simone di Martino, and Lorenzetti, with more of less note.  Of the Ascetics we have, among others, Fra Angelico, Castagno, and Giovanni di Paolo.  The Realists are ushered in by Masolino, Masaccio, Filippo Lippi, and go on in an unbroken series through Botticelli, Filippino Lippi, and Cosimo Roselli, to Domenico Ghirlandajo, Leonardo, Raffaello, and a design of Michel Angelo, painted by one of his pupils.  Nor does the succession end here; Andrea del Sarto, R. Ghirlandajo, Vasari, Bronzino, Pontormo, and others, follow.  Of the Religionists, there are Lorenzo di Credi, Fra Bartolommeo, Perugino, and their scholars.  The progress of landscape, history, and anatomical drawing may be traced in Paolo Uccello, Dello Delli, Piero di Cosimo, Pinturicchio, the Pollajuoli, and Luca Signorelli.  Here also is Gentile da Fabriano.  Venice gives us G. Bellini, M. Basaiti, Giorgione, and Paul Veronese.  And of the later Sienese, there are Sodoma, Matteo da Siena, and Beccafumi.  The list includes, also, Domenichino, Sebastian del Piombo, Guido, Salvator Rosa, Holbein, Rubens, and Lo Spagna.

The names we have cited will be enough to show those familiar with the subject the scope of the collection and its value as a consecutive series, embracing a period which few galleries in any country cover so completely, since few have been gathered on any historical plan.

The chief question, of course, is as to the authenticity of the pictures.  This cannot be decided till they are exhibited and Mr. Jarves’s proofs are before the public.  It is mainly to be decided on internal evidence, and it is on such evidence that a great part of the very early pictures in foreign collections have been labelled with the names of particular artists.  The weight of such evidence is to be