Charles it was who has enabled us at Hampton Court to study not a few of the great painters in a special and illuminative way. The galleries as we see them now are crowded, it is true, with a number of inferior pictures, and yet we feel that we are in the midst of a collection which could have been founded by no petty princeling, but by an English king, and a king who was an artist too. There is really a considerable number of pictures of the first class. Arranged together in a room like the "Tribuna" at Florence, they would be even more impressive than now, when we have to search for them among many inferior things. But when they are found, the great Tintorettos, the "Shepherd" of Giorgione, the Andrea Odoni of Lotto, the "Adam and Eve" of Mabuse, even Vandyke's "Cupid and Psyche," are enough to give fame to any great collection. And besides these, and the many charming works of lesser men, there is one mightv ruin from which we cannot withhold the tribute of a mingled admiration and regret.
VII
Of all the great acquisitions of Charles I., there was none greater than the nine pictures of Andrea Mantegna, the "Triumph of Julius Cæsar," and this is the one work of supreme merit which remains to us at Hampton Court from the magnificent collection the King made there. The picture-dealer Daniel Nys was employed from the beginning of
