The first impression, on entering the nave, is that of the vast space
filled with light and rich with color. The attention is not attracted to
particular details. Separate objects are dwarfed in the long vista. The eye
rests on nothing that is not precious, and is at first contented to wander
rapidly from one object to another, without attempting to delay on any
thing. Passing down the middle between the ordered files of statues, (all
modern works, and few of them worthy of remark,) we enter from the transept
the south nave, where the works of the foreign schools of painting are
arranged for the most part in chronological order. This nave, like the
opposite, is divided into three saloons and two vestibules. We are now in
the first saloon. On the one side are the works of the earlier Italian
masters, and on the other those of the masters of the earlier German and
Flemish schools. And it is here that one observes the chief deficiency of
the collection. The pictures which are here have been brought from the
private galleries in which England is so rich. Many a famous country-house,
full of historic and poetic associations, gains additional interest from
its gallery of pictures or of marbles. Blenheim, Wilton House, Warwick
Castle, have their old walls hung with pictures by Titian, Vandyck, and
Holbein. Who does not remember, as one of his most delightful recollections
of England,--delightful as all his recollections of that dear old
Mother-land are, if he has really seen her,--who does not thus remember the
drive from the little country town to the old family place, up the long
avenue under its ancestral trees, the ferny brook crossed by the stone
bridge with its carved balustrade, the deer feeding on the green slope
of the open park or lying under some secular oak, the heavy white clouds
casting their slow shadows on the broad lawn, the dark spreading cedars
of Lebanon standing on the edge of the bright flower-garden,--the old
house itself, with its quaint gables and oriels, the broad flight of
steps leading to the wide door,--the cheerful reception from the prim,