ile, as householders and economists, your first thought
and effort should be, to set things more square all about you. Try to
set the ground floors in order, and get the rottenness out of your
granaries. _Then_ sit and spin, but not till then.

93. IV. DISTRIBUTION.--And now, lastly, we come to the fourth great head
of our inquiry, the question of the wise distribution of the art we have
gathered and preserved. It must be evident to us, at a moment's thought,
that the way in which works of art are on the whole most useful to the
nation to which they belong, must be by their collection in public
galleries, supposing those galleries properly managed. But there is one
disadvantage attached necessarily to gallery exhibition--namely, the
extent of mischief which may be done by one foolish curator. As long as
the pictures which form the national wealth are disposed in private
collections, the chance is always that the people who buy them will be
just the people who are fond of them; and that the sense of exchangeable
value in the commodity they possess, will induce them, even if they do
not esteem it themselves, to take such care of it as will preserve its
value undiminished. At all events, so long as works of art are scattered
through the nation, no universal destruction of them is possible; a
certain average only are lost by accidents from time to time. But when
they are once collected in a large public gallery, if the appointment of
curator becomes in any way a matter of formality, or the post is so
lucrative as to be disputed by place-hunters, let but one foolish or
careless person get possession of it, and perhaps you may have all your
fine pictures repainted, and the national property destroyed, in a
month. That is actually the case at this moment, in several great
foreign galleries. They are the places of execution of pictures: over
their doors you only want the Dantesque inscription, "Lasciate ogni
speranza, voi che entrate."

94. Supposing, however, this danger properly guarded against, as it
would be always by a nation which either knew the value, or understood
the meaning, of painting,[12] arrangement in a public gallery is the
safest, as well as the most serviceable, method of exhibiting pictures;
and it is the only mode in which their historical value can be brought
out, and their historical meaning made clear. But great good is also to
be done by encouraging the private possession of pictures; partly as a
m