think it is just in
the emptiest room that the mind wanders most; for it gets restless, like
a bird, for want of a perch, and casts about for any possible means of
getting out and away. And even if it be fixed, by an effort, on the
business in hand, that business becomes itself repulsive, more than it
need be, by the vileness of its associations; and many a study appears
dull or painful to a boy, when it is pursued on a blotted deal desk,
under a wall with nothing on it but scratches and pegs, which would have
been pursued pleasantly enough in a curtained corner of his father's
library, or at the lattice window of his cottage. Now, my own belief is,
that the best study of all is the most beautiful; and that a quiet glade
of forest, or the nook of a lake shore, are worth all the schoolrooms in
Christendom, when once you are past the multiplication table; but be
that as it may, there is no question at all but that a time ought to
come in the life of a well-trained youth, when he can sit at a
writing-table without wanting to throw the inkstand at his neighbour;
and when also he will feel more capable of certain efforts of mind with
beautiful and refined forms about him than with ugly ones. When that
time comes, he ought to be advanced into the decorated schools; and this
advance ought to be one of the important and honourable epochs of his
life.

106. I have not time, however, to insist on the mere serviceableness to
our youth of refined architectural decoration, as such; for I want you
to consider the probable influence of the particular kind of decoration
which I wish you to get for them, namely, historical painting. You know
we have hitherto been in the habit of conveying all our historical
knowledge, such as it is, by the ear only, never by the eye; all our
notion of things being ostensibly derived from verbal description, not
from sight. Now, I have no doubt that, as we grow gradually wiser--and
we are doing so every day--we shall discover at last that the eye is a
nobler organ than the ear; and that through the eye we must, in reality,
obtain, or put into form, nearly all the useful information we are to
have about this world. Even as the matter stands, you will find that the
knowledge which a boy is supposed to receive from verbal description is
only available to him so far as in any underhand way he gets a sight of
the thing you are talking about. I remember well that, for many years of
my life, the only notion I