Ancient Marbles in Great Britain Author:Adolf Michaelis Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: INTRODUCTION. ON THE INFLUX OF ANTIQUE SCULPTURES INTO GREAT BRITAIN. Preliminary. NO other country in Europe can at this day boast of such a wealth of ... more »Private Collections of antique works of art as England, which in this particular recalls the Rome of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Great is the number of town-houses and palaces, still greater the number of country-seats, in which the noble and the rich treasure up, by the side of incomparable masterpieces of modern painting, considerable collections of antique works of art, especially of sculpture. So numerous are they, that few have any notion of this abundance of treasures, and perhaps no one individual enjoys a really comprehensive knowledge of them. Whatever has once reached the region of this Enchanted Island has remained there as it were spell-bound. These collections have in frequent instances experienced great vicissitudes. Many have more than once changed owners, many have come to the hammer in public auction ; they have been moved from one place to another, and in consequence have often found their way into remote and inaccessible hiding-places; indeed a certain number of specimens have been utterly lost sight of, so that only a happy chance can bring them back to light. Very few however, and those under quite peculiar circumstances, have made their way back across the Channel. " England," says a gifted writer on art, " is to works of art what the grave is to the dead; her gates do not open again to let them out1." 1 Burger, W., Les Trktrs d'Art at Angleterre, Brussels and Ostend, 861, p. i.- M. C. I The works of ancient Greek and Roman art in England alone constitute the subject of the present volume. The student who attempts to trace the introduction of such works into the country, will soon n...« less