determined by the judgment of experts, and we are informed that Mr. Jarves has a mass of testimony from those best qualified to decide in such cases,—­among it that of Sir Charles Eastlake, M. Rio, and the directors of the two great public galleries of Florence.  After all, however, this appears to us a matter of secondary consequence.  If the pictures are genuine productions of the periods they are intended to illustrate, if they are good specimens of their several schools of Art, the special names of the artists who may have painted them are a matter of less concern.  The money-value of the collection might be lessened without affecting its worth in other more considerable respects, as an illustration of the rise and progress of the most important school of modern Art.

Every year it becomes more difficult to obtain pictures of the class of which Mr. Jarves’s collection is mainly composed.  The directors of European galleries have become alive to their value, and are sparing no effort to fill the lacuna left by the more strictly virtuoso taste of a former generation.  As far as the general public is concerned, such pictures must, no doubt, create the taste by which they will be appreciated.  The style of the more archaic ones among them may be easily ridiculed, and the cry of Pre-Raphaelitism may be turned against them; but we should not forget that these earlier efforts, however they might fail in grace of treatment and ease of expression, are sincere and genuine products of their time, and very different in spirit and character from the productions of the modern school, which aims to reproduce a phase of Art when the thought and faith that animated it are gone past recall.

Mr. Jarves is desirous that the gallery should remain in his native city of Boston, and to that end is willing to part with it on very generous terms.  We cannot but hope that there will be taste and public spirit enough to realize his design.  By the side of the Museum of Natural History under the charge of Agassiz, we should like to see one of Art that would supply another great want in our culture.  The Jarves Collection gives the opportunity for a most successful beginning, and we trust it will not be allowed to follow the Ninevite Marbles.

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