ble for pleasant conversational power,
and a degree of intelligence strikingly superior to their literary
culture. This is because the processes of their art can be followed, at
least under certain circumstances, by the exercise of hand and eye,
directed merely by artistic taste and experience, whilst the intellect
is left free either for reflection or conversation. Rubens liked to be
read to when he painted; many artists like to hear people talk, and to
take a share occasionally in the conversation. The truth is that
artists, even when they work very assiduously, do in fact enjoy great
spaces of intellectual leisure, and often profit by them. Painting
itself is also a fine discipline for some of the best faculties of the
mind, though it is well known that the most gifted artists think least
about their art. Still there is a large class of painters, including
many eminent ones, who _proceed intellectually_ in the execution of
their works, who reason them out philosophically step by step, and
exercise a continual criticism upon their manual labor as it goes
forward. I find, as I know art and artists better, that this class is
more numerous than is commonly suspected, and that the charming effects
which we believe to be the result of pure inspiration have often been
elaborately reasoned out like a problem in mathematics. We are very apt
to forget that art includes a great science, the science of natural
appearances, and that the technical work of painters and engravers
cannot go forward safely without the profoundest knowledge of certain
delicate materials, this being also a science, and a difficult one. The
common tendency is to underrate (from ignorance) what is intellectual in
the practice of the fine arts; and yet the artists of past times have
left evidence enough that they thought about art, and thought deeply.
Artists are often illiterate; but it is possible to be at the same time
illiterate and intellectual; as we see frequent examples of
book-learning in people who have scarcely a single idea of their own.

LETTER II.

TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO HAD LITERARY AND ARTISTIC TASTES, BUT NO
PROFESSION.

The world only recognizes performance--Uselessness of
botch-work--Vastness of the interval between botch-work and
handicraft--Delusions of the well-to-do--Quotation from Charles
Lever--Indifference, and even contempt, for skill--Moral contempt for
skill--The contempt which comes from the pride of
knowle