From the windows you get views
of the palace-grounds, broad and stately walks, and groves of trees, and
lawns, and fountains, and the Thames and adjacent country beyond. The
walls of all these rooms are absolutely covered with pictures, including
works of all the great masters, which would require long study before a
new eye could enjoy them; and, seeing so many of them at once, and having
such a nothing of time to look at them all, I did not even try to see any
merit in them. Vandyke's picture of Charles I., on a white horse beneath
an arched gateway, made more impression on me than any other, and as I
recall it now, it seems as if I could see the king's noble, melancholy
face, and armed form, remembered not in picture, but in reality. All Sir
Peter Lely's lewd women, and Kneller's too, were in these rooms; and the
jolly old stupidity of George III. and his family, many times repeated;
and pictures by Titian, Rubens, and other famous hands, intermixed with
many by West, which provokingly drew the eye away from their betters. It
seems to me that a picture, of all other things, should be by itself;
whereas people always congregate them in galleries. To endeavor really
to see them, so arranged, is like trying to read a hundred poems at
once,--a most absurd attempt. Of all these pictures, I hardly recollect
any so well as a ridiculous old travesty of the Resurrection and Last
Judgment, where the dead people are represented as coming to life at the
sound of the trumpet,--the flesh re-establishing itself on the bones, one
man picking up his skull, and putting it on his shoulders,--and all
appearing greatly startled, only half awake, and at a loss what to do
next.
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