Item 24 - Letter from Julius Charles Hare

1 folded sheet

73 South Audley Street - Can WW tell JCH 'when there is likely to occur any opportunity for incepting?'. JCH describes his disgust at British art collectors: 'To be sure it is all in character to place a far greater value on a horse than a Madonna'. JCH aspires to the time when Britain has a National Gallery like the Louvre in Paris. 'In looking over the Report of the Committee on the Elgin marbles, which is altogether a book that reflects little credit on the country, I could not help bursting into a laugh at the last sentence, which recommends the purchase, in order that England may thus (by the purchase) become first in arts as in arms: as if supremacy in arts were a remarkable commodity. But here the other devil by which the country is possessed, the economizing spirit cries out against its parent, the commercial, and where comfort and sensual pleasure are not affected, is but feebly opposed by his brother, the luxurious one'. Richard Sheepshanks 'read to me your gradually softening accounts of your new occupations; yet I cannot wish such a curse as ever to become completely reconciled to them; and pray do not imprecate a similar one of me; for I cannot help now and then feeling a little distrust of myself, when I consider the disposition of the stomach to adapt itself to the food with which it is supplied; and look around at the numerous instances of intellects degraded by professionalism, especially by law'. Has Nancy Dennis been at Cambridge and is Mary Anderson developing her beauty?