of her father, left in the Queen's apartments at Windsor Castle, where Lord Preston had an establishment as Lord Chamberlain to James, and which, in the confusion of the times, appears to have been still retained by the nobleman's domestics and family. The day after Lord Preston was condemned, Queen Mary found the little Lady Catherine gazing intently on the whole-length portrait of James, which still remains in St. George's Gallery, and, struck with the mournful expression of the child's face, suddenly asked what she saw to affect her so? "I was thinking," said the child, "how hard it is that my father should die for so loving yours." The story goes that the Queen, struck by the apt reply, immediately pardoned the father. Viscount Preston had been ambassador to France and a secretary of state under James. At the Revolution he was thrown into the Tower, but soon liberated, and afterwards being caught in an attempt to escape to his old master, as the head of a new and important conspiracy, he was again imprisoned, tried, and sentenced to death, the effect of which sentence he escaped as we have described. The Viscount was a Graham of Netherby, and the Netherby estates descend to the present holder of them through the lady who,

living unmarried to a good old age, could remember the romantic and effective incident of her childhood.

CONTEMPORARY PORTRAIT OF RICHARD II.

"On paying a recent visit to Westminster Abbey," says a gentleman writing in 1874, "I was glad to see the contemporary portrait of King Richard II. hanging in the chancel. This very interesting relic of the craft of the medieval limner used formerly to be in the famous Jerusalem Chamber, and when the late Mr. Charles Kean revived Shakespeare's Richard II., the countenance and costume of the ill-fated sovereign were presented on the stage copied accurately enough from this picture. Some years since Mr. George Scharf, the accomplished antiquarian draughtsman, made the remarkable discovery that this picture was, as it were, a pictorial palimpsest, the original subject having been repainted several times over at various periods. Curiously enough, the later work was coarser and in every way inferior to the original painting, which has now been revealed by the skilful removal of the superimposed coatings. This genuine and almost unique specimen of fourteenth-century portraiture is wonderfully fine

and delicate; it has been carefully cleaned and restored, and appropriately framed, and, backed by a noble piece of quiet-toned old tapestry, now hangs on the south side of the Abbey Sacrarium, not many yards from the tomb where the illfated Plantagenet monarch sleeps by the side of his Queen."

DISCOVERED WORKS OF PAUL VERONESE.

In June 1874, the governors of the Almshouse at Chartres wishing to adorn the chapel, requested the curator of the local museum to select from among the old canvases relegated to their lumberroom such as, after some repairs, might be used for the purpose. The curator accordingly chose four, of from 9 feet to 13 feet in height, representing saints. He proceeded to clean them, but while carefully washing them noticed that new paintings had been laid over the more primitive ones. He removed the false beards and additional draperies, and finished by bringing to light four magnificent canvases of Veronese, which are said to be genuine chefs-d'œuvre. They now adorn the chapel of the Almshouse at Chartres.

Great Picture Sales.

THE price of 10,000 guineas paid for the stolen portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire by Gainsborough would have surprised Horace Walpole, who, writing to Sir Horace Mann on the 9th of February 1758, speaks of the "rage of expense in pleasures" which then affected society. "One glaring extravagance," he says, "is the constant high price given for pictures. The other day, at Mr. Furnese's auction, a very small Gasper sold for seventy-six guineas; and a Carlo Maratti, which, too, I am persuaded was a Giuseppe Chiari, Lord Egremont bought at the rate of £260. Mr. Spencer gave no less than £2200 for the Andrea Sacchi and the Guido from the same collection. The latter is of very dubious originality. My father, I think, preferred the Andrea Sacchi to his own Guido, and once offered £700 for it; but Furnese said, 'Damn him, it is for him; he shall pay a thousand.' There is a pewterer, one Cleeve,

who some time ago gave £1000 for four very small Dutch pictures. I know but one dear picture not sold: Cooper's head of Oliver Cromwell—an unfinished miniature: they asked me £400 for it." One of the greatest picture sales of recent years was that of

THE PEEL COLLECTION.

The splendid gallery of pictures formed by the late Sir Robert Peel at Whitehall Gardens was purchased by the Government in 1871 for the sum of £70,000. The collection comprises about seventy works, many of them gems by the old masters of the Dutch and Flemish schools, and their additions have made the National Gallery more fully representative of those schools than any of its Continental rivals.

The most celebrated picture in the collection is Rubens' "Chapeau de Paille." This title appears to be a misnomer. The portrait is in what is strangely termed a "Spanish hat." Why it has become the fashion in this country to designate every slouched hat with a feather a Spanish hat, it is hard to say, since at the period that such hats were commonly worn (about the reign of Charles I. of England), they were not more pecu