eneral literature, and of natural science. Admirable skill, and some of
the best talent of modern times, are occupied in supplying this want;
and there is no limit to the good which may be effected by rightly
taking advantage of the powers we now possess of placing good and lovely
art within the reach of the poorest classes. Much has been already
accomplished; but great harm has been done also,--first, by forms of art
definitely addressed to depraved tastes; and, secondly, in a more subtle
way, by really beautiful and useful engravings which are yet not good
enough to retain their influence on the public mind;--which weary it by
redundant quantity of monotonous average excellence, and diminish or
destroy its power of accurate attention to work of a higher order.

Especially this is to be regretted in the effect produced on the schools
of line engraving, which had reached in England an executive skill of a
kind before unexampled, and which of late have lost much of their more
sterling and legitimate methods. Still, I have seen plates produced
quite recently, more beautiful, I think, in some qualities than anything
ever before attained by the burin: and I have not the slightest fear
that photography, or any other adverse or competitive operation, will in
the least ultimately diminish,--I believe they will, on the contrary,
stimulate and exalt--the grand old powers of the wood and the steel.

11. Such are, I think, briefly the present conditions of art with which
we have to deal; and I conceive it to be the function of this
Professorship, with respect to them, to establish both a practical and
critical school of fine art for English gentlemen: practical, so that if
they draw at all, they may draw rightly; and critical, so that being
first directed to such works of existing art as will best reward their
study, they may afterwards make their patronage of living artists
delightful to themselves in their consciousness of its justice, and, to
the utmost, beneficial to their country, by being given to the men who
deserve it; in the early period of their lives, when they both need it
most, and can be influenced by it to the best advantage.

12. And especially with reference to this function of patronage, I
believe myself justified in taking into account future probabilities as
to the character and range of art in England: and I shall endeavour at
once to organise with you a system of study calculated to develop
chiefly the k