Of the Picture Gallery too what can I say that can possibly give you an idea of its variety and extent?  Here are the finest works of the Italian, Flemish, and French schools, and you are as much embarrassed to single out the favourite object, as the Grand Signor would be, among six or seven hundred of the most beautiful women in the world, to make his choice.  The only fault I find in this collection is that there were rather too many Scripture pieces, Crucifixions, Martyrdoms and allegorical pictures, and too few from historical or mythological subjects.  Yet perhaps I am wrong in classing the Scripture pieces with Martyrdoms, Crucifixions, Grillings of Saints and Madonnas; there are very many beautiful episodes in the Scriptures which would furnish admirable subjects for painters.  Why then have they chosen disgusting subjects such as Judith sawing off Holofernes’ head, Siserah’s head nailed to the bedpost, John the Baptist’s on a trencher, etc.?  But the pictures representing Martyrdoms are too revolting to the eye and should not be placed in this Museum.

It is reported that the Allies mean to strip this Museum [of sculpture and painting].  No! it cannot be, they never surely can be guilty of such an act of Vandalism and contemptible spite.  I am aware that there is a great clamour amongst a certain description of English for restoring these statues and pictures to the countries from whence they came, and that it is the fashion to term the translation of them to Paris a revolutionary robbery; but let us bring these gentlemen to a calm reasoning on the subject.

The statues and paintings in question belonged either to Governments at war with France, or to individuals inhabiting those countries; now, with respect to individuals, I will venture to affirm, on the best authority, that the property of no individual was taken from him without an equivalent.  Those who had statues and pictures of value and wished to sell them, received their full value from the French Government, but there was no force used on the occasion; in fact, many who were in want of money were rejoiced at the opportunity of selling, as they could never have otherwise disposed of those valuable articles to individuals at the same price that the French Government gave.  I recollect a day or two ago being in conversation with a Milanese on this subject and others connected with the occupation of Italy by the French.  I happened to mention that the conquest of Italy by the Republican armies must have been attended with confiscation of property; he assured me that no such thing as confiscation of property took place; that so far from being the losers by the French invasion and the establishment of their system, they had on the contrary been considerable gainers, for that the country flourished under their domination in a manner before unknown, and that one of the greatest advantages attendant on the occupation was the establishment of an equality of weight and measures, the decimal division of the coin, the introduction of an admirable code of laws free’d from all barbarisms—­legal, political and theological—­and intelligible to all classes, so that there was no occasion to cite old authors and go back for three or four hundred years to hunt out authorities and precedents for what men of sense could determine at once by following the dictates of their own judgment.