in the garden below. If, however, they have any
real enjoyment of pictures, and want to look at this one or that, the
principal point is never to disturb them in looking at what interests
them, and never to make them look at what does not. Nothing is of the
least use to young people (nor, by the way, of much use to old ones),
but what interests them; and therefore, though it is of great importance
to put nothing but good art into their possession, yet, when they are
passing through great houses or galleries, they should be allowed to
look precisely at what pleases them: if it is not useful to them as art,
it will be in some other way; and the healthiest way in which art can
interest them is when they look at it, not as art, but because it
represents something they like in Nature. If a boy has had his heart
filled by the life of some great man, and goes up thirstily to a Vandyck
portrait of him, to see what he was like, that is the wholesomest way in
which he can begin the study of portraiture; if he loves mountains, and
dwells on a Turner drawing because he sees in it a likeness to a
Yorkshire scar or an Alpine pass, that is the wholesomest way in which
he can begin the study of landscape; and if a girl's mind is filled with
dreams of angels and saints, and she pauses before an Angelico because
she thinks it must surely be like heaven, that is the right way for her
to begin the study of religious art.

256. When, however, the student has made some definite progress, and
every picture becomes really a guide to him, false or true, in his own
work, it is of great importance that he should never look, with even
partial admiration, at bad art; and then, if the reader is willing to
trust me in the matter, the following advice will be useful to him. In
which, with his permission, I will quit the indirect and return to the
epistolary address, as being the more convenient.

First, in Galleries of Pictures:

1. You may look, with trust in their being always right, at Titian,
Veronese, Tintoret, Giorgione, John Bellini, and Velasquez; the
authenticity of the picture being of course established for you by
proper authority.

2. You may look with admiration, admitting, however, question of right
and wrong,[75] at Van Eyck, Holbein, Perugino, Francia, Angelico,
Leonardo da Vinci, Correggio, Vandyck, Rembrandt, Reynolds,
Gainsborough, Turner, and the modern Pre-Raphaelites.[76] You had better
look at no other painters than the