Bouillon, were reached on the 19th of May
1852, by the Conception, attributed to Murillo.
It now hangs in the Square Saloon at the Louvre,
where it is popularly stood before and admired
for its beauty— and its price, five hundred and
eighty-six thousand francs.

That was a great day, the day of its going.
Veterans of the Hotel feel it an honour to have
been present, and garrulously report its
incidents, as who should say, Magna pars fui. The
room was crowded and deoxgenated to the last
degree of breathable unfragrance. How the
emotion of the House rose with the titanic
gradation of bids to the topmost holding-place
of exaltation, if you have been an auction
follower, you may imagine; if not you can't; and
don't try, as I will not to describe. And how
depict the finely-frenzied commissaire, his
eye rolling up the sum at a thousand francs a
glance! When his fateful hammer struck, the
assembly expressed their relief from tension by
one of those great sub-diaphragmatic "ahs!" such
as impassioned orators and actors count among
the most grateful signs of triumph; and loud
applause issued from the public chest when the
Director of the National Museum was announced
as the purchaser. His serious rivals were an
English nobleman and a Russian prince. Had
the Marquis of Hertford and Prince Demidoff
abstained from the contest, the French government
would doubtless have won the prize at
something like half the cost. In the same gallery
there is the same subject differently treated by
the same artist, which was acquired by Louis the
Eighteenth in 1817 for six thousand francs. The
very picture, along with two others by the same
artist, was bought in 1835 for Louis Philippe
at half a million francs. The bargain was broken
a month afterwards, and it returned to the
possession of Marshal Soult. Last February there
was a sale of a collection of one of the Princes
Demidoff, which brought in all eight hundred
thousand francs. In it was the Stratonice, by
Ingres, formerly owned by the Duke of Orleans,
for which the agent of its present princely
owner bid ninety-two thousand francs. It was
said at the time that yet another prince of
another French house was here, as he had been
in a famous pamphlet-duel two years ago, the
antagonist of the Due d'Aumale, who else had
got it cheaper. Had both princely customers
stayed away, au undistinguished third party
might have had it yet cheaper; had the vendor
not been a prince, yet yet cheaper.

To return for a little to the Murillo. There
are two malicious legends about it. One is, that
the old monks gave the artist his bed and board,
and some quite small daily wages for the time he
worked, but the balance of his bill in notes of
indulgences drawn beyond time. The other is,
that Marshal Soult, while campaigning in Spain,
conveyed it to his possession still less expensively,
by indulging the modern monks in immunity
from plunder by any one else. There are also
two morose criticisms on it. One is, that it has
been so repainted and repaired, as not to leave
a clear hand breath of Murillo's original touch.

The other is, that Murillo never touched it, but
that it is the work of his pupil and imitator,
Ozorio Menesses. A good name in pictures is
as immediate a jewel as in man and woman. It
may be nothing to young ladies in love, and to
the fame of roses, but to amateurs in the fine
arts, and to the merits of pictures, there are
banknotes in a name. A Virgin and Child, called
from the catalogue a Murillo, was sold at the
Hotel five years ago for forty-five thousand
francs; it had been bought a few years before,
in an unchristened condition, for seven hundred
and fifty.

The cabinet of M. Pierard was one of the
finest broken up by the auctioneer's hammer, in
1859. It was remarkably rich in old Dutch
and Flemish beauties. Those who do not chance
even to have heard of the deceased M. Pierard
of Valenciennes, should be advertised that he
was not only an ardent lover and learned judge,
but, as is apt to be the case with such, a very
shrewd commercial connoisseur of art. Well,
there was a Ruysdael that he had obtained long
ago, when picture gathering was less the mode
with carelessly wealthy collectors than it is now,
for five thousand francs, and hugged himself
over the bargain. But doubts afterwards arose,
not as to the intrinsic worth of the same, but
as to the authenticity of the signature. Monsieur
X. took the benefit of the doubt and the picture
for fifteen hundred francs. Somebody will hold
himself lucky before many years to acquire it
for an additional right-hand cipher. A beautiful
marine went for seven hundred instead of seven
thousand francs, because, unluckily for the heirs,
it was signed doubtfully Solomon instead of
assuredly Jacob Ruysdael; a Wouverman—
with a white horse, of course— for over twenty-
five thousand, that M. Pierard had paid three
thousand francs. On the French side there was
a concert attributed to Watteau, that stopped
at sixteen hundred and fifty; could it have been
certified it would have easily risen an octave of
thousands higher. Watteaus, very rare now-a-
days, if real, and very high priced, were to be
had fifty years ago for the present cost of good
engravings of them before the letter. Fifty
years earlier again, his satin robed shepherdesses,
his harlequins, and pierrots, his smiling
landscapes and charming colour, were in yet
unexhausted vogue. Boucher, his grosser successor,
'' le peintre des graces mignards et des amours
bouffis," whose excessive fertility of production
prevents rarity even to-day, and Fragonard, who
fell with the Bourbons and Dubarry, before the
Revolution and the hard Romanastic severity
of David and his school, enjoy a similar though
lesser, and less deserved, recovery of estimation,
in the prevalent revival of a taste rather catholic
than nice, at best eclectic rather than select.

At the Lord Seymour sale three seasons back,
the Marquis of Hertford added to his immense
magazine a Bonnington, for fifty thousand
francs, for which his brother had paid but four
thousand five hundred. Bonnington, apart
from his intrinsic merit, which is great, has
fashion in his favour; I mean that fashion is in