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lection, must necessarily have proved puzzling even to well informed visitors. 
As to the specimens shown, while they were all good, and some of them, indeed, very fine, there were nevertheless wanting quite a number of things which ought to have been included, but instead of which, from dire necessity, inferior examples were exhibited.
When an institution like the U.S. National Museum, the only institution of its kind under the care of the government of the United States, attempts to illustrate the beginnings of line engraving, of mezzotinting, of color-printing from metal plates, etc., it ought to be able to show the rarest and best things, - fine Masters E S and the best of Schongauers, instead of only a late impression from a Schongauer plate, a mezzotint by Von Siegen, instead of merely a Wallerant Vaillant; colorprints by Le Blon and Debucourt, instead of