or fairy-like handling which made their primary reputation are now forever gone, leaving little behind them except the composition to sustain it in competition with modern work.  As bad, however, as is this wanton injury, that of repainting is greater.  Inadequate to replace the delicate work he has rubbed off, to harmonize the whole and make it look fresh and new, the restorer passes his own brush over the entire picture, and thus finally obscures whatever of technical originality there might still have been preserved after the cleaning.  The extent of injury European galleries have thus received is incalculable.  One instance will suffice as an example of many.  Some years gone by, the Titian’s Bella Donna of the Pitti was intact.  Unluckily it got into the hands of a professional cleaner.  A celebrated dealer happened to be standing by when it was rehung.  Looking at it, he exclaimed,—­“Two weeks ago I would have given the Grand Duke two thousand pounds for that picture on speculation; now I would not give two hundred.”

Each restoration displaces more of the original and replaces it with the restorer.  As the same hands generally have a monopoly of a public gallery, the contents of some are beginning to acquire a strange uniformity of external character, while the old masters in the same degree are vanishing from them.  These remarks, however, are more applicable to past than to present systems; for a reform founded on true artistic principles is being everywhere inaugurated.

Oil-paintings gradually deepen in tone; while tempera, if protected from humidity, retain their brilliancy and clearness as long as the material on which they rest endures.  The true occupation of the restorer is to put the work given to him in a condition as near as possible to its original state, carefully abstaining from obliterating the legitimate marks of age, and limiting himself to just what is sufficient for the actual conservation of the picture.  One of the chief needs of many old pictures is the removal of old repaintings.  This done, the less added the better, unless, if a piece be wanting, it can be so harmonized with the original as to escape observation.  But this is a special art, and to be done only by those acquainted with the old methods.  In perfect condition ancient paintings cannot be.  We must receive them for what they are, with the corrodings and changes of time upon them.  How interesting in this respect is the Sienese Gallery!  Here the restorer has been stayed, and we find the pictures genuine as time itself, and more precious by far to the student than the most glaring and “refreshed” surfaces of those works in other galleries which are the wonder and admiration of superficial observers.

The greatest difficulty of the restorer is to harmonize permanently the new vehicles with the old; for the fresh tints are always liable to assume a different tone from the original, which have already been chemically acted upon by time.