The Academy dinner on Saturday was differentiated from other dinners
chiefly by a pleasing announcement from Lord Salisbury. The Premier told his audience that a private gentleman had offered that morning, if the Government would find a site near Charing Cross, to build a National Portrait Gallery and present it to the people. The donor wished his name concealed,—perhaps from modesty, perhaps from dread of the torture of comments on his history, his means, his motives, his appearance, and his wife's dress, to which the newspapers, when his name is known, will immediately subject him. Better just now be a mur- derer thnni a benefactor ; for if you are the latter, no one will spare you, and if you are the former, one-half the journalists will exalt you into an injured hero. It is charac- teristic of the donor, and of Englishmen, that he gives as his own motive the wish to house decently a picture he intends to present to the nation ; and of the newspapers, that as he wishes not to be known, they have been trying to detect the offender ever since. It is announced officially that they have not succeeded ; but a man so exceptional as to be able to give away £100,000, yet not wish for newspaper notoriety, will speedily be bunted down, and "chopped."
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