eling and intelligence in every touch of the chisel and file that
wrought it. Could that same object seen occasionally in a museum showcase
afford me any comparable pleasure? Is not the education of the eye, like
the education of the sentiments, dependent upon stable associations that
can be many times repeated? Shall I seem merely covetous because I crave
besides the casual and adventurous contact with beauty in the world, a
gratification which is sure and ever waiting for me? But let me cite
rather a certain collector and man of great affairs, who perforce spends
his days in adjusting business interests that extend from the arctic
snows to the tropics. His evenings belong generally to his friends, for
he possesses in a rare degree the art of companionship. The small hours
are his own, and frequently he spends them in painting beautiful copies
of his Japanese potteries. It is his homage to the artisans who contrived
those strange forms and imagined those gorgeous glazes. In the end he
will have a catalogue illustrated from his own designs. Meanwhile, he
knows his potteries as the shepherd knows his flock. What casuist will
find the heart to deny him so innocent a pleasure? And he merely
represents in a very high degree the sort of priestliness that the true
collector feels towards his temporary possessions.

And this sense of the high, nay, supreme value of beautiful things, has
its evident uses. That the beauty of art has not largely perished from
the earth is due chiefly to the collector. He interposes his
sensitiveness between the insensibility of the average man and the always
exiled thing of beauty. If we have in a fractional measure the art
treasures of the past, it has been because the collector has given them
asylum. Museums, all manner of overt public activities, derive ultimately
from his initiative. It is he who asserts the continuity of art and
illustrates its dignity. The stewardship of art is manifold, but no one
has a clearer right to that honourable title. "Private vices, public
virtues," I hear a cynical reader murmur. So be it. I am ready to stand
with the latitudinarian Mandeville. The view makes for charity. I only
plead that he who covets his neighbour's tea-jar--I assume a desirable
one, say, in old brown Kioto--shall be judged less harshly than he who
covets his neighbour's ox.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COLLECTORS***

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