n in men like Turner and
Gainsborough; while in the common grade of our second-rate painters the
evil attains a pitch which is far too sadly manifest to need my dwelling
upon it. Now, no branch of art economy is more important than that of
making the intellect at your disposal pure as well as powerful; so that
it may always gather for you the sweetest and fairest things. The same
quantity of labour from the same man's hand, will, according as you have
trained him, produce a lovely and useful work, or a base and hurtful
one; and depend upon it, whatever value it may possess, by reason of the
painter's skill, its chief and final value, to any nation, depends upon
its being able to exalt and refine, as well as to please; and that the
picture which most truly deserves the name of an art-treasure is that
which has been painted by a good man.

29. You cannot but see how far this would lead, if I were to enlarge
upon it. I must take it up as a separate subject some other time: only
noticing at present that no money could be better spent by a nation than
in providing a liberal and disciplined education for its painters, as
they advance into the critical period of their youth; and that, also, a
large part of their power during life depends upon the kind of subjects
which you, the public, ask them for, and therefore the kind of thoughts
with which you require them to be habitually familiar. I shall have more
to say on this head when we come to consider what employment they should
have in public buildings.

30. There are many other points of nearly as much importance as these,
to be explained with reference to the development of genius; but I
should have to ask you to come and hear six lectures instead of two if I
were to go into their detail. For instance, I have not spoken of the way
in which you ought to look for those artificers in various manual
trades, who, without possessing the order of genius which you would
desire to devote to higher purposes, yet possess wit, and humour, and
sense of colour, and fancy for form--all commercially valuable as
quantities of intellect, and all more or less expressible in the lower
arts of iron-work, pottery, decorative sculpture, and such like. But
these details, interesting as they are, I must commend to your own
consideration, or leave for some future inquiry. I want just now only to
set the bearings of the entire subject broadly before you, with enough
of detailed illustration to mak