hat the best spirits
in the art world had laboured for since the commencement of the century.
A society of unmitigated selfishness was thus started, and still
continues. When everything else around has been reformed, as the country
has advanced and increased, the Royal Academy remains exactly as it was
when so hurriedly formed one hundred and thirty years ago.

To all this I received endless confirmation, but, alas! the writers did
not give me permission to publish their names. I have on my desk before
me as I write this page a letter from the editor of our most artistic
illustrated weekly: "Allow me to congratulate you; keep pegging away.
The Royal Academy of Arts (plural) is nonsense; it is, as you say, a
Royal Academy of oil. If the R.A. had done their duty years ago, we
would not see such farcical statues in the streets, nor should I (as at
present moment employed) be writing to Berlin and Vienna for assistance
in matters where skill and taste are required by art workmen." The
President of a certain Royal Academy wrote: "I have just read your
'Royal Academy Antics,' and I must confess that, as far as I can judge,
many of its strictures are deserved; ... but I can venture to say that
many of the antiquated mistakes made by the parent Academy have been
carefully avoided by our governing body."

[Illustration: THE FIRST P.R.A.]

From all sorts and conditions of artists and art employers I received
congratulations. Those from the poor struggling outsiders alone repaid
me for the trouble I had taken. At that time, only eleven years ago, the
Royal Academy and other picture shows were in a very different position
from what they are now. Art is no longer a fashion; proportionately the
Royal Academy is going down. The glory of Lord Leighton, one of the
brightest of Society's stars, attracted hosts of fashionable people to
the gatherings of the Academy, and Sir John Millais, too, was much run
after by the fashionable crowd. Now that these are gone, the Academy has
lost all interest in smart Society. "Academy Antics up to Date" would
not have any sale, "An Artistic Joke" in Bond Street would not have any
visitors. I fought for the weak when they were crushed by the strong.
Now that "My Lady Oil" is feeble and powerless, I desist.

"The Royal Academy has been the subject of many bitter attacks," wrote
the editor of the _Magazine of Art_, "during the last hundred
years--attacks which, directed against unjust or antiquated rul