PRICES OF GALLERIES.
Reading edition
The prices given for the three great collections of paintings sold in England within the last century, may perhaps not be uninteresting. The Houghton gallery, of two hundred and thirty-two pictures, collected by Sir Robert Walpole, was sold to the Empress Catharine of Russia for £43,500. The Orleans gallery of two hundred and ninety-six pictures was sold in London, in 1798, for £43,555; and the Angerstein collection of thirty-eight pictures was bought by the British government, in 1823, for £57,000. This last purchase was the commencement of the English National Gallery.