Banqueting-room, at Whitehall, was painted by Rubens; and it was the intention of Charles that Vandyke should have covered the walls with the history of the order of the Garter, in a friendly emulation with his master. This hall of audience for ambassadors, is stated to be only the fifty-fifth part of this gorgeous palace. But the paintings of Vandyke for the edifice of Inigo Jones exist only in a sketch in chiaro-scuro; by the civil wars the nation lost the glory of the paintings and the palace.

The first collector of the productions of the fine arts in our country, was that Earl of Arundel, whose memorable marbles perpetuate his name. Before his day we cannot discover in England any single gallery of pictures and statues, nor cabinets of medals and engraved gems. A collection of Queen Elizabeth's rarities, exhibited the lowest tastes of elaborate toys and frivolous curiosities. This travelled Earl, who had repeatedly visited the Continent, and more particularly the land of his admiration and his love, Italy, exhausted his wealth and his magnificence in the prodigality of his fine tastes. Of this father of our arts, Walpole tells, that "He was the first who discovered the genius of Inigo Jones; and in his embassy to Vienna, he found Hollar at Prague”—and did

not leave him there! To this Earl, as Peacham has felicitously expressed it, "This angle of the world oweth the first sight of Grecian and Roman statues ;" and Lily notices, that "this Earl brought the new way of building with brick in the city." The tastes of the noble collector were caught by the aspiring genius of Prince Henry, who left a considerable collection of medals. Thus the germs of a cultivated taste for the arts were first scattered in the gardens and the galleries of Arundel-house. Charles succeeded to his brother with a more decided propensity, and with a royal decision, that all the arts of invention, or of imagination, should no longer be foreign to England.

We discover Charles when Prince of Wales deeply busied with the arts; and at that early period, he designed inviting great artists to England. Offers of this nature he never ceased to make to those great foreigners whose immortal names still attest that there was no mediocrity in the Royal taste. The history of a manufacture of fine gold and silver tapestry shows this early ardour. This manufacture, introduced into this country by Sir Francis Crane, and established at Mortlake, in Surrey, the young Prince not only patronised, but con

ceived the idea of improving the splendid material by finer designs. Sir Henry Wotton, our ambassador at Venice, by order of the Prince, procured Cleyne, the painter, to reside in England, for the purpose of inventing the designs. Charles built a residence for the artist, whose subjects, both in history and grotesque, were a great improvement on the rude gothic figures which they had hitherto worked

on.

Fine and rich tapestries were the most valued of domestic ornaments, and to raise to the utmost perfection the Mortlake tapestry, was so favourite an object with the young Prince, that when at Madrid, amidst love and revels, the Mortlake tapestry was still in his thoughts, for he wrote to his council to pay 7007. for some Italian drawings for tapestry. The taste of the youthful patron was rising faster than the genius of Cleyne could advance; for Charles now sought for subjects which were of a higher character of art than the grotesque fancy of Cleyne invented. Rubens was afterwards employed, when Charles was King, in painting sketches of the history of Achilles, to be copied in tapestry at Mortlake, and Charles purchased the seven Cartoons of Raphael for the purpose of supplying more elevated subjects for this

tapestry. It was no fault of Charles the First that we did not anticipate the gobelins of Louis XIV.

It was on the accession to his throne that Charles made the greatest effort for the acquisition of pictures and statues. The sum may seem to us trivial for a royal purchase, yet it was an effort which the King could never repeat. Charles purchased the entire cabinet of the Duke of Mantua for a sum supposed to be under twenty thousand pounds; which, Mr. Dallaway observes, the King found no very easy business to pay. It should, however, be observed, that such noble productions of art had not then reached the large prices which afterwards the possessors-never the artistscould obtain. It was the taste of Charles the First, and the splendour of Philip the Fourth of Spain, which first raised their value in the estimation of Europe. At the dispersion of the collection of paintings of Charles the First, their number amounted to about five hundred pictures, besides many which had been embezzled. When we consider the straitened means of the King, and the short space of fifteen years in which that collection had been formed, we have evidence how earnestly it occupied the Royal attention, and the whole

may be considered as his own creation. The foundation of this royal collection of pictures was a few Italian and Flemish paintings, which, in the days of Henry the Eighth, had been scattered among our palaces, lying unregarded as old furniture, and which, we are told, had received scarcely a single accession in the succeeding reigns. At all times Charles had in his mind his collection, and called the attention of his friends, or his agents, to his aid.* When the Marquis of Hamilton was acting under the King of Sweden, in a campaign in Germany, the King adds this postscript to one of his letters, "I hope shortly you will be in a possibility to perform your promise concerning pictures and statues of Muncken; therefore now in earnest do not forget it." Nor was the Monarch less careful in their preservation; for when the Queen's great masque was to be performed at Whitehall, Charles ordered a temporary building to be erected for this spectacle at a considerable charge, lest his pictures in the Banqueting-house should be damaged by the lights.+

* The King was always highly gratified by the present of a painting from his ambassadors.

+ Burnet's Memoirs of the Dukes of Hamilton, 22.

Strafford's Letters, ii. 140.