Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/433

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and its Green Border-Land.
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333 feet. All these apartments, large and small, are adorned and enriched with specimens of high art and high labour collected by all the families that have owned and occupied the estate. Ιn some respects, each room, if not the museum, is the mirror of its age. Armour and articles of luxurious or antique furniture divide with pictures of the same dates the admiration of the visiter. Here is the celebrated painting of Charles I, by Vandyck, for which Sir Joshua Reynolds offered to pay 500 guineas in his time. How much it would bring under the hammer to-day those who know the existing furore for the old masters may easily estimate. And all the old masters are here, represented each in several of the pictures that made their fame. In fact a national gallery of paintings, of creditable number and variety, might be filled from the treasures of the art exhibited in these splendid apartments. Here figure Rubens, Rembrandt, Vandyck, Salvator Rosa, Guido, Murillo, David, and other great artists of different ages, schools, and countries. Then, as the frame-work of all these pictures, you see the artistry of the chisel, or carved work in wood and stone of contemporary schools in that department. Then the garnered treasures collected by these various branches of the family, purchased in different centuries and countries, are arranged in happy taste and harmony with the