for
pictures that you really like, and in buying which you can help some
genius yet unperished--that is the best atonement you can make to the
one you have neglected--and give to the living and struggling painter at
once wages, and testimonial.

104. So far then of the motives which should induce us to keep down the
prices of modern art, and thus render it, as a private possession,
attainable by greater numbers of people than at present. But we should
strive to render it accessible to them in other ways also--chiefly by
the permanent decoration of public buildings; and it is in this field
that I think we may look for the profitable means of providing that
constant employment for young painters of which we were speaking last
evening.

The first and most important kind of public buildings which we are
always sure to want, are schools: and I would ask you to consider very
carefully, whether we may not wisely introduce some great changes in the
way of school decoration. Hitherto, as far as I know, it has either been
so difficult to give all the education we wanted to our lads, that we
have been obliged to do it, if at all, with cheap furniture and bare
walls; or else we have considered that cheap furniture and bare walls
are a proper part of the means of education; and supposed that boys
learned best when they sat on hard forms, and had nothing but blank
plaster about and above them whereupon to employ their spare attention;
also, that it was as well they should be accustomed to rough and ugly
conditions of things, partly by way of preparing them for the hardships
of life, and partly that there might be the least possible damage done
to floors and forms, in the event of their becoming, during the master's
absence, the fields or instruments of battle. All this is so far well
and necessary, as it relates to the training of country lads, and the
first training of boys in general. But there certainly comes a period in
the life of a well-educated youth, in which one of the principal
elements of his education is, or ought to be, to give him refinement of
habits; and not only to teach him the strong exercises of which his
frame is capable, but also to increase his bodily sensibility and
refinement, and show him such small matters as the way of handling
things properly, and treating them considerately.

105. Not only so; but I believe the notion of fixing the attention by
keeping the room empty, is a wholly mistaken one: I