text:  Is there any one who pretends to acquaintance with literature however uninitiated he may be in the mysteries of the arts who has not read the _Discourses_ of Sir Joshua Reynolds and who has not wished after reading them to be enabled to say "anche io son pittore?" When we are told of picture galleries with their thousand works of art and are warmed by the descriptions feeble though they must be of many of them we seem to be suddenly led by a lamp of more magical power than Aladdin's; for what was his gallery of fruit-trees bearing precious stones to a gallery rich in pictures the still brighter fruits of genius presenting endless variety each one almost a world in itself and all enticing the imagination into regions unbounded of charm and loveliness suggested though not made visible but to the mind's eye? We remember in our school days giving Virgil credit for much tact in endeavouring to make a gentleman of AEneas and succeeding too for a while in raising the more than equivocal character of his hero by placing him in the picture-gallery of the Queen of Carthage and giving him leisure to contemplate and to criticise and poetically to describe to his silent and spiritless lounger-friend many noble and many touching works