Indoor collections of statues and busts are to be seen in the Abbey, in St. Paul's, in the National Portrait Gallery and the Tate Gallery, in the Houses of Parliament and the British Museum; while the long facade of the Institute of Royal Painters in Water Colours in Piccadilly has a fine row of the masters in that medium De Wint and David Cox, Girtin and Turner, for example. On the roof of Burlington House, again, are many artists.

The practice of setting groups of allegorical statuary on the facades of houses has grown. Perhaps the most striking recent addition is the pediment of Africa House in Kingsway, which represents a big-game hunter's apotheosis. Australia House in the Strand has also some giant figures intended, I suppose, to exert an Antipodean lure. Other giants will be found on the new London County Council palace.

Statuary on buildings seems to be watched with a very jealous eye. Many readers of this book may remember the controversy caused by Mr. Epstein's series of statues on the facade of the "British Medical Association" building in the Strand, the objection being to certain realistic details. There was no bending to that storm, but when, a few years later, some feminine "rondeurs" over the door of the United Kingdom Assurance Office in the Strand were publicly criticised, a prompt reduction of their opulence was effected. Opposite this office, on the other side of the Gladstone monument, is another Assurance building, the General, which has on its facade some of the most charming stone figures in London cherubs in helmets : for all I know members of the angelic fire brigade.

To the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square we shall return later; but after my digression on statutes and the English pride or want of pride in their great men, this is the time to enter the National Portrait Gallery, bard by, where pictures of most of the nation's principal sons since the days when painters first got to work among us (less than a poor four hundred years ago, so modern is our culture,) may be studied. In masterpieces the gallery i$ not .rich nor need it be, for the interest is rather in the sitter than in the artist yet it has many very fine portraits (quite a number of Reynolds', for example), a few superlatively fine, and not many wholly bad. Taken as a whole it is a very worthy collection, and one of which England has every reason to be proud. A composite photograph of each group of men here would make an interesting study, and it might have significance to a Lavater unless, of course, the painters have lied.

The numbering of the rooms begins on the top floor, and, as for a while at any rate, chronological order is respected, it is well to make a start there.

The earliest English portrait is in Room I, that of Richard H. We then jump to Tudor times and the school of Holbein. Here is Henry VIII and here is his valiant daughter Elizabeth, painted twice, brocaded and pale.

In Room II we find Tudor worthies such as Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Michael Drayton.

Room III is Stuart. Charles I is here, painted by Van Dyck; his daughter, Elizabeth Queen of Bohemia ("Ye meaner beauties of the night ") is here too, and there is a group of the Villiers family by Honthorst.

Room IV is a small recess given to Cavaliers.

Room V has a large painting of a Peace Conference in 1604, very different from Sir William Orpen's treatment of a more recent gathering. Van Dyck's picture of Charles I's children hangs here.

In the next room, VI, we come to Cromwell, by Robert Walker, and Milton.

In Room VII Charles the Second is found; and a number of Sir Peter Lelys are here, notably Mistress Eleanor Gwynn.

The most notable picture in Room VIII is the dead Monmouth by Sir Godfrey Kneller.

In Room IX the same painter has a portrait of the author of " The Beggar's Opera." In the middle is an astonishingly life-like coloured modelled head of Colley Cibber. There is also the head, but not coloured, of Hogarth.

THE MADONNA OF THE MEADOW,

AFTER THE PICTURE BY MARCO BASAITI IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY

In Room X we find Richard Wilson, famous for his golden landscapes, as a painter of princes ; Peg Woffington in bed, and a realistic portrait of Whitefield converting a listener.

Charles James Fox, modelled by Nollekens, and painted as a robust country squire by Hickel, is one of the dominating figures in Room XI. Warren Hastings by Lawrence and Burke by Reynolds are also here, and there is a fine head of Garrick in clay.

Room XII is given to eighteenth-century artists and men of letters, Reynolds as a young man, by himself, being one of the masterpieces. Dr. Johnson and Goldsmith, both by Sir Joshua, hang here, and George Coleman by Gainsborough. A little portrait of Gibbon by Henry Walton makes him very podgy.

We now leave the top floor, passing a series of electrotypes of Westminster Abbey statues and, also on the top landing, a very fine portrait of Henrietta Maria by Honthorst, and explore the floor beneath, where the reference section is situated, being Rooms XIV to XXII. This is an immense assemblage of persons of note in every walk of life, beginning with Tudors and Stuarts in Room XIV, miscellaneous eighteenth century in Rooms XV to XVIIA, and then artists and musicians, authors and statesmen, of the eighteenth century, in Rooms XVIII and XIX. In Rooms XX-XXII are the nineteenth-century men of eminence. All these are valuable as portraits ; but the best painting of the heroes of the same period is reserved for three rooms below. First, however, we go through a series of royal paintings coming right to our own time on landings XXIII and XXIV, Sir John Lavery's group of the reigning Royal Family being one of the most modern.

To most visitors of the National Portrait Gallery the three rooms XXV-XXVII are the best, and particularly XXV, where Mr. Sargent's Henry James, Octavia Hill and Coventry Patmore are to be found, and Millais' Thomas Carlyle, and G. F. Watts' Matthew Arnold, Browning, Tennyson and Swinburne, and Richmond's R. L. Stevenson. A bust of Thackeray as a boy is very interesting.

In Room XXVI are the great scientific men of the Victorian Age, and in Room XXVII actors, artists and musicians, Bastien-Lepage's little vivid painting of Henry Irving being the masterpiece.

On the ground floor are the Victorian soldiers, sailors and statesmen, the Duke of Wellington occurring more than once. One of the finest pictures is Sir John Moore by Lawrence. Millais' Disraeli and Ouless's John Bright remain in the memory.