28th May. A RECENT mail announces the fact that the widow of Sir Richard Wallace has bequeathed the priceless Hertford collection of pictures to the British nation, This is perhaps the most munificent art gift the country has ever received, and the nonchalance of the Press and public speakers on the occasion is to us one of the most curious features io the life history of a collection which has been curious all through. We remember some twenty-five years ago going down to the unsavoury purlieus of Bethnal Green, and jostling Demos in his starkest condition to see these immortal works. We may add that ever since we have had a hearty liking and respect for Demos; true, he was somewhat partial to the nude, but he reached towards the emotional impulse of the great masters in a manner which would have done credit to the (modern) prophet John—we mean Ruskin.
In Leigh Hunt's beautiful little poem, Abou Ben Adhem, on hearing that his name was not in God's book said to the recording angel pray thee then Write me as one who loves his fellow mev."
The next night It came again with a great wakening ight And showed the names whom love of God has blessed, And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.
The Marquis of Hertford, who lived in early Victorian times, must on contrasted grounds have been the Devil's very own, if even half of what we hear about him be true, Born to the inheritance of vast estates and an enormous accumulation of money, the "Wicked Marquis" as he was called, openly defied for a whole generation the restrictions of rank, honour and morality. His contemporaries deemed him capable of every baseness, including the neglect of soap; they said that in his case vice prevailed even when the passions and folly of youth had passed away; that he only grew more wicked as temptation abated; that when broken health at last barred the gratification of appetite, he turned aside to nurse a savage misanthropy in retirement. The genius of Thackeray has for ever pilloried the man in English: literature his Lordship unconsciously sat to the great limner for the portrait of Lord Steyne in Vanity Fair. he thrashing which in that great work Rawdon Crawley administered to the little beast,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.