Rare Works Of Art

All the great pictures in the Goncourt collection havo now been sold at the Hotel Drouot and have realized 69G.000 francs, or L27,840, says a Paris letter. It Is to be notsd that the brothers Goncourt, as related in the famous diary, often pinched themselves in order to purchaso pietures and art objects for their collection. They would undoubtedly be surprlsed iL they were alive to read the prices obtained at the recent salo for old drawings and engravings whlch they picked up years ago on the Paris quays and elsewhere for a few gold or silver picces. They were keen dilettanti and knew good works of art when they saw them, but thoy cou'd hardly have realized that a sketch by the younger Moreau, for whlch they paid about a dollar7 would be purchased years afterwards for hundreds of dollars. Thcre is now every prospect that the Goncourt academy may become an accomplished fact, and ' that the literary legatees, as well as the i I poör relations, may receive somothing v.-oi-th having out of the estáte. When E.'.mond de Gouncourt dted it was fldently asserted by many that hls ariistic collections would not realize L8 000, whereas his pictures and enBvavings alone hav alreády brought in tacre than treble that amount.