I
feel, as I think most others must in middle life, that I have spent as
much of my maturer years in unlearning as in learning.

The proper course is for a boy to begin the practical business of life
many years earlier than he now commonly does. He should begin at the
very bottom of a profession; if possible of one which his family has
pursued before him--for the professions will assuredly one day become
hereditary. The ideal railway director will have begun at fourteen as a
railway porter. He need not be a porter for more than a week or ten
days, any more than he need have been a tadpole more than a short time;
but he should take a turn in practice, though briefly, at each of the
lower branches in the profession. The painter should do just the same.
He should begin by setting his employer's palette and cleaning his
brushes. As for the good side of universities, the proper preservative
of this is to be found in the club.

If, then, we are to have a renaissance of art, there must be a complete
standing aloof from the academic system. That system has had time
enough. Where and who are its men? Can it point to one painter who can
hold his own with the men of, say, from 1450 to 1550? Academies will
bring out men who can paint hair very like hair, and eyes very like eyes,
but this is not enough. This is grammar and deportment; we want wit and
a kindly nature, and these cannot be got from academies. As far as mere
_technique_ is concerned, almost every one now can paint as well as is in
the least desirable. The same _mutatis mutandis_ holds good with writing
as with painting. We want less word-painting and fine phrases, and more
observation at first-hand. Let us have a periodical illustrated by
people who cannot draw, and written by people who cannot write (perhaps,
however, after all, we have some), but who look and think for themselves,
and express themselves just as they please,--and this we certainly have
not. Every contributor should be at once turned out if he or she is
generally believed to have tried to do something which he or she did not
care about trying to do, and anything should be admitted which is the
outcome of a genuine liking. People are always good company when they
are doing what they really enjoy. A cat is good company when it is
purring, or a dog when it is wagging its tail.

The sketching-clubs up and down the country might form the nucleus of
such a society, provided all professional